Liberal media ‘snuffed out' Hunter Biden coverage until after election to help defeat Trump, critics say

The liberal mainstream media largely ignored the ongoing Hunter Biden scandal until after his father won the presidential election — and media watchdogs feel it was a strategic move to help Joe Biden defeat President Trump.

“The news media helped silence a story and alter the results of an election. They are probably laughing in newsrooms all around the country,” Media Research Center vice president Dan Gainor told Fox News.

In the final weeks of the campaign, there was an unprecedented media blackout of the explosive reporting from the New York Post that shed light on Hunter Biden's questionable business dealings overseas. It was even revealed through leaked recordings from Project Veritas that CNN president Jeff Zucker and CNN political director David Chalian urged staff to avoid the scandal, which involved a laptop allegedly belonging to the son of the president-elect and purportedly contained evidence of his dealings with Ukraine, among other things.

It is not clear whether the ongoing taxes probe is in any way connected to the laptop's contents.

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On Wednesday, the Biden-Harris transition announced that the younger Biden's "tax affairs" were being investigated and suddenly CNN and MSNBC found time to cover the news.

The scandal that was once dismissed by members of the media as “too disgusting” to cover and a "baseless conspiracy theory" now appears to be newsworthy in the eyes of the networks' decision-makers.

The Hill media columnist and Fox News contributor Joe Concha said the New York Post is presumably angry that it was accused of “peddling Russian disinformation.”

“This thing was not only dismissed, it was actually suppressed,” Concha said Thursday on “America’s Newsroom.”

“It only makes you imagine… as far as Arizona, and Georgia and Pennsylvania, those races that were so close, if there was the vigor around the reporting about Hunter Biden as there was around Russian collusion, if the result could have been changed at some point,” Concha said.

CNN and MSNBC did not immediately respond to a series of questions, including a request for explanation as to why they initially ignored the story and whether or not they have any regrets now that the president-elect's son revealed his "tax affairs" are being investigated by the Delaware U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Cornell Law School professor and media critic William A. Jacobson told Fox News that mainstream media appears to have “snuffed out the Hunter Biden scandal” in order to help the former vice president's election chances.

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”It would have seriously hurt Joe Biden's campaign enough to make a difference in key swing states,” Jacobson said. “Now that the election is over, and the media mission appears to be accomplished, there are no such constraints. Rather than regretting this journalistic malfeasance, the perpetrators likely are quite proud of themselves."

Conservative strategist Chris Barron agrees that CNN and MSNBC essentially helped Biden win the election.

“Hunter Biden’s business dealings would have cost Joe Biden any shot at the White House, which is exactly why outlets like CNN and MSNBC refused to cover the issue before the election,” Barron told Fox News.

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“Any news outlet with even a shred of credibility or commitment to journalistic integrity would view the news of a federal investigation into Hunter Biden as proof that they had erred dramatically in not covering this issue sooner,” Barron added. “Alas, CNN and MSNBC care little about credibility and even less about journalistic integrity.”

As CNN honchos remain publicly silent, the network dispatched in-house media pundit Oliver Darcy to justify why it initially dismissed the news, blaming Trump and a chaotic news cycle for why it didn’t cover the Hunter Biden story until after Election Day.

Darcy penned a section of CNN’s media newsletter labeled, “Keeping stories in proportion,” that claimed the network was chasing the story while simultaneously downplaying its relevance.

 "With the news cycle as chaotic as it has ever been, knowing what stories to focus on is as important as ever. Wednesday provided a great example of this, with Hunter Biden confirming he is being investigated for his taxes. CNN had been chasing this news and had asked for comment, which likely prompted the Biden camp to go public,” Darcy wrote in the newsletter that caters to coastal elite members of the liberal media.

“Yes, the son of the president-elect being under federal investigation is a big story. There is no doubt about that. But is it a bigger story than the actual president trying to overturn the results of the US election? No, it's not,” Darcy continued. “Is it more important than the pandemic surging across the country killing thousands of people each week? No, it's not. Covering the Hunter Biden story is important, but it should be in proportion."

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Everyone from former acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell to former CNN contributor Steve Cortes have mocked CNN’s pivot.

DePauw University professor and media critic Jeffrey McCall feels it is “clear the traditional media carefully crafted its collective news agenda in the run-up to the election” as there was little scrutiny of Biden's policy plans or his “routine gaffes, misstatements, and certainly no interest in delving into the Hunter Biden situation” until after Election Day.

“This was ‘thumb-on-the-scales’ journalism that kept Biden out of controversy and maintained a focus on Trump chaos,” McCall told Fox News.

“It is hard to assess what impact this lack of media scrutiny might have had on the election results, but the impact was certainly not zero. Post-election polling by the Media Research Center showed that over a third of Biden voters were unaware of the Hunter matter at all,” McCall added, referring to an MRC poll that indicated 36 percent of Biden voters were completely unaware of the scandal.

Despite potentially influencing the outcome of the presidential election, McCall doesn’t think CNN and other liberal media outlets would do anything differently if they had the chance to do it over again.

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“Gatekeepers at the big media outlets surely have no regrets for how they covered the campaign and their recent modest interest in Hunter Biden will not be a long-lasting agenda focus,” he said.

Gainor said the situation brings to mind a quote from blogger David Burge, who once said, “Journalism is about covering important stories. With a pillow, until they stop moving.”

But the media watchdog said he would tweak the phrase. “I’d add, only stories that make the left look bad,” Gainor said.

Fox News’ Joseph A. Wulfsohn and Brooke Singman contributed to this report.