Just after the midterms, regular NPR analyst Jonah Goldberg appeared on morning edition and offered their favorite take on the idea that the incoming House Republican majority would have hearings on Hunter Biden’s laptop. This is “infotainment”:
The incentive structure on the right is to do fan service and infotainment for the grassroots. The incentive structure on big chunks of the left is the same. And the base of the Republican Party will want to see Hunter Biden’s laptop and Hunter Biden’s life dissected as if it were a medical specimen in a 19th century medical school.
He summed up, “I think Biden will probably have politics on his side” in 2024.
After the first Hunter Biden/Twitter Files hearing on Wednesday, NPR did not talk about it on its nationwide network of radio stations. Instead, there was a dismissive hiss on their website under the heading “UNTANGLING THE DISINFORMATION”. Their headline kept the usual tone, that “misinformation” and “conservative Republican” go hand in hand: “Former Twitter officials dismiss GOP allegations of government collusion.”
It didn’t quite capture the fact that former Twitter officials performed the usual ritual of having incredibly stale memories of what they actually communicated with and to government officials about the removal of Hunter’s story.
In a contentious House hearing, Republicans accused Twitter of colluding with the Biden campaign to censor a New York Post article about his son, Hunter, weeks before the 2020 election.
Former Twitter officials have denied the allegations. https://t.co/fqN76m9vK8
—NPR (@NPR) February 8, 2023
The beat by NPR tech reporter Shannon Bond is described as “covering how misleading narratives and misrepresentations circulate online and offline, and their impact on society and democracy.” But on the Hunter Biden story, the misleading narrative was the false claim that Hunter’s laptop was “Russian disinformation.” For conservatives, it’s nice to see NPR forced to cover a Republican audience on this topic they’d rather avoid. Notice how Bond thinks accusing Big Tech of a liberal tilt is just “alleged.”
Republicans accused the social media company of colluding with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Biden campaign to censor the Post story and aired longstanding grievances about what they’re saying is the Silicon Valley bias against conservatives…
Republicans point to incident as prime example of Silicon Valley alleged anti-conservative bias. More recently, seizing the Twitter files, they pushed the claim that the government and the Biden campaign pressured Twitter to delete the story – even though the Twitter file disclosures do not include any evidence that this is the case.
The White House criticized Wednesday’s hearing as “a bizarre political stunt” and the latest effort by hardline Republicans to “question the outcome of the 2020 election.”
Notice Bond didn’t put “hardcore Republicans” in quotes, it’s not “purported”.
Bond wrote “In the days when [New York] Job article was published, it was unclear to what extent the material purported to be from Hunter Biden’s laptop was authentic. “, but she did not notice that the New York Times And Washington Post have since authenticated it.
Just like NPR did in Bond’s Last Arrogant Story on the Twitter files, they didn’t offer the transparency to tell consumers they had aggressively trashed the Hunter laptop story as a waste of time, a non-story, a “pure distraction” – in in short, “fake news”. It was not an “alleged bias” against the Conservatives. It was a real bias.
Why haven’t you seen any NPR story on NY Post’s Hunter Biden story? Find out more in this week’s newsletter ➡️ https://t.co/CJesPgmGvo pic.twitter.com/jAi7PnpbZf
— NPR Public Editor (@NPRpubliceditor) October 22, 2020
Do not hesitate to contact NPR Public Editor and ask when they will fix their 2020 Hunter Biden mistakes.