What Happens When the Press Stops Doing Its Job?

The Hunter Biden Laptop story

A few people asked me this week what to make of the whole Hunter Biden laptop story. I’ll be honest – I’m not a fan of politics in general and I had other plans for this week’s blog. But let’s face it – me going happily along with my plans while this 2,000-pound elephant stomps into the room would be pretty weird. In fact, the more I thought about it, I decided this story might be the best example I can think of, EVER, to illustrate exactly how unbelievably messed up the media is right now. It’s uncanny, really, how much this story underscores everything I have told you over the past three months.

So, I’m rolling up my sleeves and – Bob Ross bravery test! – tackling this subject in the least politically offensive way possible. And before I do, I am shouting from the rooftops that I DON’T CARE IF YOU ARE VOTING FOR TRUMP, OR BIDEN, OR JO JORGENSON (go Clemson Tigers!) OR ANYONE ELSE. I respect you and your right to your opinion, no matter what. I don’t care, either, what this story means for Donald Trump’s campaign or for Joe Biden’s campaign. I want to talk to you about the bigger picture, here.

I want to talk to you today about what this story means for the media, or “press.”

Before we get to the story itself, I want to just go over what, exactly, the press’ role should be, here in the U.S. You may have heard it called the “Fourth Estate,” but, in simplest terms, the press in a free and democratic society operates as a part of the system of checks and balances that keeps everyone - politicians, corporations and people in general - honest and above board. Interestingly, when I did a Bing search on “Media Role in Democratic Society,” this came up, from a 1998 NATO seminar; it’s a great summary:

After reading this, I think you’ll see both what the media’s job is, and what it isn’t. The media’s job is NOT to try people in a court of public opinion. The media’s job is NOT to determine if someone is innocent or guilty. The media’s job is NOT to tell the rest of us what’s more important and less important. The media’s job is most definitely NOT to pick sides and play favorites. The only job the media has is to report facts to the American people so they can make informed decisions. ***When the media ceases to do even this, it ceases to have any relevant purpose in our society. Period.

Now keep that in mind as we move forward and take a look at the VERY BASIC facts in the Hunter Biden laptop story as of this month, in chronological order:

1. Mid-October, the New York Post publishes a story about some abandoned laptops, allegedly belonging to Hunter Biden (Joe Biden’s son), that contained, among other things, controversial emails indicating Hunter Biden gave special access to / arranged a meeting with his father for an official at the Ukranian Energy company where Hunter was a board member.

2. The vast majority of media outlets nationwide refuse to cover this story or any of its details, calling it Russian disinformation & saying it is not corroborated. Facebook and Twitter essentially block the story from being shared on their platforms.

3. The Biden campaign denies the meeting happened.

4. Fox News reporters (that network originally passed on this story) end up corroborating a source from a different email on the laptop, which indicates that Joe Biden received money “as part of a deal with a Chinese investment firm,” per the Washington Examiner.

5. The Director of National Intelligence announces this Hunter Biden laptop story is not a Russian disinformation campaign.

6. The day of the final Presidential debate, a Biden family business partner who had been mentioned in the China-related emails, Tony Bobulinski, comes forward on his own & holds a press conference corroborating what’s been found in the emails, announcing what’s been alleged in the Post story is true and emphatically saying that it is not a Russian disinformation campaign.

7. During the debate Biden dismisses the laptop allegations as “Russian misinformation.” Again, the press largely ignores the story.

8. The only journalist in the nation willing to interview Bobulinski following his allegations is Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, on Tuesday, October 27 (here’s the YouTube link – it’s an excellent interview; well worth a watch). During the interview, Bobulinski says he met personally with Joe Biden regarding a business opportunity with a Chinese company. Bobulinsky notes he felt the Biden family’s business dealings with China make Joe Biden a potentially compromised Presidential candidate and shows Carlson specific texts and emails sent to him that back up his assertions. Carlson also releases audio recordings between Bobulinski and high-level Biden consultants indicating the family knows this is not good.

As stories go, this one’s got a lot going on. One thing I’ll say right off the bat - this story is the poster child for why you need to read both left- and right-leaning news sources. If you only read left-leaning sources, you’d never even know this story had happened. And that’s not good.

Another thing that makes the story complex is that it was released just two weeks before election day, and it has some major red flags that would cause any self-respecting journalist to proceed with caution - namely that it was initially discovered and released by two of President Trump’s biggest political allies, Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon. So, any of the media’s initial hesitation to cover it as legitimate is WELL WARRANTED (then again, playing devil’s advocate as I personally LOVE to do, the outlet that broke the story - the New York Post– is pretty well respected and also “the oldest continually published newspaper in the United States,” founded in 1801 by Alexander Hamilton - now of Hamilton, The Musical, fame - per this article on its history).

Either way, where this story starts to get weird, fast, is:

1. When it starts being corroborated by other news outlets (most notably Fox News and the Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley Strassel),

2. when the Director of National Intelligence says this story is NOT “Russian misinformation,” and

3. when Tony Bobulinsky, who is named in many of the emails on this laptop, comes forward on Tucker Carlson’s show with some pretty disturbing allegations about Joe Biden, the man who’s running as Democratic candidate for President, being involved in very lucrative deals with a Chinese company that had strong ties to the Chinese government.

So – reminder here – the media’s role is NOT to have an opinion in all of this. Sure – like we learned a week or so ago - 93% of people in media are NOT Republicans, so theoretically, a large number of them will be supporting Biden. But if they are actually journalists, that shouldn’t matter. If you are a legitimate news outlet, you are going to want to cover this story. And if you’re a legitimate journalist, you have a crazy fire in your belly for wanting to know if this or any story with such specific and potentially damning details is true or not. In fact, a legitimate journalist would be knocking over other reporters to try and corroborate or debunk this information (think: rabid bridesmaid tackling the rest of the group for the bouquet).

Instead, from our great American “press corps,” we got…. crickets.

Forget the Ad Fontes Media Bias Chart we discussed last month – if you want to see where the news outlet you read / watch stacks up as a legitimate source of information, go to their website, type “Hunter Biden” or “Tony Bobulinski” in the search line and see what comes up. The results are laughable.

Newsweek is the only main left-leaning outlet I found that actually truly addresses the story. Nobody else has covered Tony Bobulinski at all. ABC has several months- and even years-old stories about Hunter Biden but just one from this past month - an interview with him about his work on the Ukranian company’s board. No mention of the laptop. CNN mentions Hunter BIden incidentally in a couple of stories but never covers the laptop or its alleged contents as flat out news. MSNBC never covers the laptop story itself either, instead focusing on Trump’s reaction to it and keeping up the stories saying it’s Russian propaganda. NBC does the same. Most notably, though, this whole story is missing almost entirely from the two wire services, AP and Reuters, which you now know supply news to thousands of other outlets nationwide. AP does link to stories about it on other sites, but has written none of its own. Why?

Here’s another thing I want you to think about. In my lifetime, ratings (ie: the number of viewers watching in a given night) have always been the main way of measuring success and driving content (ie: what makes it into the show) in television news. Now that we have the internet, news organizations also closely monitor traffic – ie: how many people come to their site and how long they linger on each story. These kinds of things drive advertising dollars (revenue) but, more importantly, in hard news, the goal is always to be better than everyone else in ratings and views / traffic. Those two things dictate all.

So consider that, the night Tucker Carlson’s interview with Tony Bobulinski aired on Fox News, it had 7.6 million viewers. The only things that beat it, per both Fox News and this Programming Insider article, were game six of the World Series (11.36 million viewers at 8 pm) and The Voice (7.74 million viewers at 8). The Bachelorette started that same hour with 4.48 million viewers and the Price is Right started it with 5.12 million. Also consider that Carlson’s interview with Bobulinski, per this Newsweek article, “has been viewed over 2.5 million times on Twitter” as of Wednesday night, 10/28.

Now ask yourself a question – if ratings, views and traffic drive news organizations, and if Carlson’s coverage of this story came in third in the nation and garnered well over two million views on Twitter alone… why didn’t the other news organizations want to report on this story? Does it make any kind of business sense that these news outlets are willing to forgo high ratings (and the subsequent advertising dollars that accompany them) just to skip this story?

People defending the news might answer that question by saying: the news rooms who chose not to air this story are morally superior to those who chose to run it because it was uncorroborated and could have been Russian disinformation. But that argument is flawed since, by 10/27, when Carlson ran the Bobulinsky interview, both Fox and the Wall Street Journal’s Kimberly Strassel had contacted people mentioned in the emails and verified that the emails were real, AND since the Director of National Intelligence had already announced the story was not part of a Russian disinformation campaign.

Those of us who more routinely question the news will tell you that this illustrates, quite well, that the media no longer functions as a media should. It is acting as something else.

When it comes to Presidential politics, reporters have been incredibly tough on Trump for all four of his years in office. I don’t agree with the obsessive and sometimes hysterical tone of much of their work, but, overall, that is their job. The media MUST question everything and everyone in power – including and especially the President of the United States.

So it should concern everyone in this nation right now that the media is NOT doing the same thing with Joe Biden, who, according to national polls, could well be elected President next week. In fact, not only are they not doing the same thing, they are plugging their figurative ears and screaming “la-la-la-la” as loud as they can. They are LITERALLY pretending this story doesn’t exist. Meantime, they have forgotten to keep pretending they are objective...

Here’s the thing – we have no idea at this point if Joe Biden is guilty of anything (and remember, assessing innocence or guilt is NOT the media’s job). We don’t know if Joe Biden ever profited from any of the deals found in this laptop. If a troupe of trained journalists attacked this as they should, we might learn tomorrow that Biden is in the clear and that his poor, messed-up son is even more messed up than we thought. Or maybe we’d learn this laptop is fake. Or maybe we’d learn some of the information on the laptop was true and some of it was fake. Or maybe we’d learn it’s all true and the Bidens are in big trouble. But guess what? If no one covers this story at all, we will learn nothing. The American people will be left in the dark.

Those on the Biden side of things might be ecstatic about the fact that this story has been censored from social and regular media alike. Whether it’s true or not, this story has the power to take down Biden’s presidential bid in one fell swoop, and recreate the Comey / Clinton email derailment of 2016. People who are sick of Trump might say – yes, this might be true, but who cares? The greater good is leaving the story alone and getting Trump out of the white house. We have to do whatever it takes. The ends will justify the means.

If that’s how you are thinking, I have to ask you to stop and think about that once more. And I want you to consider two really important questions: Does that kind of thinking have a place in a democratic society? And is it morally right to do things just because you think the ends justify the means?

Here’s another thing to think about: Ever since President Trump was sworn in, dozens of opinion pieces (at least) have been published online about “Freedom of the Press” (as granted in our Constitution’s First Amendment) and how it could be compromised by a President who continuously calls much of the media “fake news.” The big fear here is that Trump, who clearly despises the media, will start issuing executive orders and passing laws (with the help of the Republican-led Senate) to curb press freedoms. So far, though, for all the President’s name-calling and bluster, he has done nothing to this end.

But the MORE interesting, and I think frightening, things that no journalist has ever even thought to consider are these:

• What happens when the press willingly chooses – of its own free will – to curb its own freedoms?

• What happens when the press stops holding some people accountable?

• What happens when the press willingly chooses to ignore stories that hurt the causes they personally believe in (remember when I wrote about how bizarrely homogeneous they are as a group)?

• What happens when the vast majority of news outlets begins doing these same things in lockstep with one another?

• And what happens when the few news outlets who do cover these stories are censored by big tech so they cannot reach large numbers of people?

Most important of all, though, is this:

What happens to democracy when the Fourth Estate, the press, stops doing its job?

For now, this behavior might benefit Biden supporters or anti-Trumpers, or both. But you know as well as I do that if the media is successful in pulling the wool over our collective eyes here, they are going to revel in their newfound power and they aren’t going to stop with just this one story. The Washington Post’s Margaret Sullivan already told you as much - remember from way back in my first blog post? They think it’s their job to tell you what’s important, not the other way around. They think YOU are both incompetent and incapable of processing complex information.

But here, I think, is the real concern in all of this. In the end, it’s not going to matter much WHO gets into the oval office next week if we no longer have a functioning press to hold them accountable. In the end, once again, YOU, the American people, will be the big losers in this game if the people pretending to be journalists in this country continue on with this frightening charade.