When the New York Post reported on October 14 that Hunter Biden had introduced an official from the corrupt Ukrainian energy company Burisma to then-Vice President Joe Biden — contrary to the latter’s denials that he had ever spoken to his family about their businesses — Facebook announced that it would be suppressing the story, and Twitter prevented people from sharing it. Those who dared were suspended; the Post itself was locked out of its account for more than two weeks.
While I will intentionally not link to the New York Post, I want be clear that this story is eligible to be fact checked by Facebook’s third-party fact checking partners. In the meantime, we are reducing its distribution on our platform.
— Andy Stone (@andymstone) October 14, 2020
2. Twitter
6. Fox News
While Fox did some reporting on the story, Chris Wallace — who had moderated the first presidential debate — poured scorn on the story, calling it “completely unverified” and adding that “Rudy Giuliani is not the most reliable source anymore.”
7. MSNBC
MSNBC treated the Hunter Biden laptop story as if it were disinformation — to the extent the network covered it at all. Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough called it “false,” saying it was “one of the stupidest October surprises I’ve ever seen.”
8. New York Times
The Times tried to discredit the story by reporting that staff at the New York Post doubted the authenticity of the story. As Breitbart News’ John Nolte pointed out, the Times never bothered to dispute the facts that the Post had actually reported.
9. Politico
Politico reported the letter from intelligence officials who called the Post story Russian “disinformation.” It also reported that the Biden campaign could not deny that a meeting with the Burisma executive may have happened, but it buried the lede. Later, after the election, Politico gloated that the Hunter Biden laptop story had “fizzled,” calling it a distraction.
10. Axios
Axios media reporter Sara Fischer praised the censorship of the Post story, saying that the “defense systems” had worked. She credited intelligence agencies who had worked with Big Tech to identify materials that had possibly been hacked.
11. CNN
CNN deliberately spiked the story, and media reporter Brian Stelter demanded more censorship from Silicon Valley. He defended the media’s “ethics” on the story and dismissed it as “a classic example of the right-wing media machine.”
12. National Public Radio
Taxpayer-funded NPR ignored the story, explaining to the public: “We don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don’t want to waste listeners’ and readers’ time on that stories that are just pure distractions.”
Why haven’t you seen any stories from NPR about the NY Post’s Hunter Biden story? Read more in this week’s newsletter➡️ https://t.co/CJesPgmGvo pic.twitter.com/jAi7PnpbZf
— NPR Public Editor (@NPRpubliceditor) October 22, 2020
13. ABC News
During a 90-minute town hall meeting with Joe Biden, ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos failed to ask the candidate a single question about Hunter Biden, or about the Post story on the laptop, which had come out just the day before.
14. NBC News
NBC tried to debunk the Hunter Biden laptop story with a story titled “How a fake persona laid the groundwork for a Hunter Biden conspiracy deluge.” It claimed Trump associates were sharing a 64-page document full of falsehoods about Biden.