New York magazine became the latest mainstream media outlet to take Hunter Biden’s scandalous laptop seriously earlier this month in the form of a lengthy feature, and one of its authors believes "it was embarrassing that the mainstream media" was so quick to ever dismiss it as "Russian disinformation."
New York published a lengthy story by Andrew Rice and Olivia Nuzzi headlined, "The Sordid Saga of Hunter Biden’s Laptop," that received praise from Fourth Watch editor Steve Krakauer, a media watchdog.
"I wonder how many readers of New York magazine still believed the story was ‘Russian disinformation,’ as the intel community asserted at the time, and much of the media parroted," Krakauer wrote. "How many people have missed the bits and pieces of reporting by The Washington Post, CNN and others more than 18 months later that have verified the laptop, and still think it was fake because of how the story was handled in October 2020?"
New York magazine’s Olivia Nuzzi believes it was "embarrassing" that the mainstream media was so quick to chalk up Hunter Biden’s laptop as Russian disinformation. (Nuzzi)
HUNTER BIDEN: NEW YORK MAG IS LATEST MAINSTREAM OUTLET TO TAKE SCANDALOUS LAPTOP SERIOUSLY
Krakauer spoke to Nuzzi about the way the media handled the laptop, which was famously reported on by the New York Post weeks before the 2020 election.
The laptop was dismissed as unreliable and even Russian disinformation by mainstream print and television outlets, especially MSNBC and CNN. Twitter and Facebook blocked or limited sharing of the New York Post's article about Biden, and Twitter even locked the New York Post out of its account for weeks.
"I thought it was embarrassing that the mainstream media had been so eager to accept and so relieved to have the excuse of the theory that it was a Russian disinformation campaign," Nuzzi said.
"I’ve always been interested in our knee jerk deference to the intelligence community and how we never learn any lessons related to that. I had reflected a lot about what it would look like if this had been Donald Trump Jr., and I had no trouble whatsoever picturing myself sitting on a cable panel alongside professional pundits and nodding along as someone with the credibility to say so called Don’s Laptop [was] a threat to national security, and contributing in agreement to such a discussion, and absolutely meaning it," she continued. "It’s very, very easy to get caught in a talking point trap, to participate in popular political discourse — and to do so semi-thoughtfully, with original analysis — and to never challenge the foundation of the conversation."
Hunter Biden's laptop was dismissed as "Russian disinformation" in mainstream media circles in 2020. ((Randy Holmes via Getty Images))
Nuzzi feels pundits "don’t have to be acting dishonestly or in a partisan way" for that to happen, even though most of the outlets that initially downplayed or dismissed the damming laptop are notoriously liberal.
"Certainly as a younger reporter you’re susceptible to that, but it seems that all manner of people of all levels of seniority are similarly susceptible to that. When things are moving quickly and you’re trying to sort out how to speak in public about a complicated issue, how to contextualize information, where to direct your focus, what shorthands to grab for, The Narrative can sweep you up and you don’t even realize it," Nuzzi said.
Nuzi also questioned why so many media professionals ignored the story prior to the election, insisting there wasn’t some secret meeting where newsroom leaders decided to "not cover this aggressively or at all," but "on an individual basis, self interest and a lack of intellectual courage seemed to come together to form what amounted to an industry-wide posture" towards the laptop.
"I thought it was a dereliction of duty on the part of the mainstream press and also just super lame that such an account did not exist and I was eager to team up with Andrew to take on the assignment ourselves," she said. "I saw the challenge as framing this as a story that is much bigger and much more complex than how it was told by the Biden family’s political opposition. This is a story about alleged corruption, yes, but it’s also a story about privacy and the future of political warfare in the 21st century. It’s a story about life in the modern world."
President Biden and Hunter Biden.
The laptop saga began in October 2020, when the New York Post reported about a 2015 email from a Ukrainian energy executive to Hunter Biden, thanking him for introducing him to his father, that it obtained from the hard drive of Biden's laptop. Joe Biden was vice president at the time of the message, and his son then enjoyed a lucrative position on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy firm, raising concerns of attempted influence-peddling with his powerful father.
"People in the mainstream media refer to the right wing media 'bubble' a lot. And have for some time. But on this story, the mainstream media was in its own bubble," Nuzzi told Fourth Watch.