NPR takes back the Hunter Biden story
Well, who knew that Hunter Biden was going to write a book and talk about it on TV?
It caught NPR off base, and they had to issue the following statement (via Steven Nelson at the New York Post):
National Public Radio has corrected an online article that falsely asserted that documents from first son Hunter Biden's laptop had been "discredited by U.S. intelligence."
A book review of Hunter Biden's memoir Beautiful Things initially dismissed the documents first reported in October by The Post.
"The laptop story was discredited by US intelligence and independent investigations by news organizations," the book review by Ron Elving, senior editor of the publicly funded media organization, initially claimed.
The correction on the Thursday article now says, "A previous version of this story said US intelligence had discredited the laptop story. US intelligence officials have not made a statement to that effect."
Okay, so they made a mistake. Doesn't everybody make mistakes? The problem is that this mistake was more than writing the wrong date on forgetting to sign the check.
In this "mistake," the Biden campaign was given a pass on the subject. Biden operatives didn't have to answer detailed questions because NPR and others did it for them. In other words, the Biden campaign could simply say several media sources had discounted the validity of the story.
Keep in mind that this "mistake" was made in mid-October, about the time it could have influenced a few voters.
The second problem is that every mistake made during the Trump years was always in the same direction. After all, did "anyone familiar with the situation" ever say the whole Russia story was not true?
We are glad that NPR made the correction. I'm just not confident that it's changed a bit.
PS: You can listen to my show (Canto Talk).
Image: acaben.
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