Media top headlines September 13
In media news today, an MSNBC historian uses 9/11 to campaign against Republicans, an LA Times columnist calls Larry Elder a 'very real threat' to communities of color, and the Washington Post's Glenn Kessler gets mocked for praising NYC's vaccine mandate
Readers tore into the New York Times Monday for using the word "unsubstantiated" in a tweet about the New York Post's bombshell report last October. The report showed then-presidential candidate Joe Biden's son Hunter introduced his father to a top executive at the corrupt Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings less than a year before a top Ukrainian prosecutor was forced out for looking into the firm.
The Post claimed that the correspondence it had obtained contradicted Biden's claim that he'd "never" spoken to his son about his overseas business dealings. Hunter sat on the board of Burisma Holdings.
Twitter infamously moved to block the distribution of the article and locked the New York Post's account, claiming it took action against the article due to the company's "Hacked Materials Policy." CEO Jack Dorsey would later admit in congressional hearings the social media giant had erred in its handling of the situation.
"Tech companies, spurred on by these censorious journalists, shut down the account of one of America’s most-read newspapers to inhibit users from reading the story. It was completely unprecedented," the Post said of the controversy in December.
But the Federal Election Commission on Monday determined that Twitter’s actions against the Hunter laptop article had been undertaken for a valid commercial reason, not a political purpose, and were allowable, according to a document obtained by the Times.
"Breaking News: The FEC ruled that Twitter’s decision in October to block an unsubstantiated article about President Biden's son, Hunter Biden, did not violate election laws, according to a document obtained by The New York Times," the Times tweeted, with a link to the new report.
Social media users familiar with the Hunter Biden saga told the Times that the tweet would have been sufficient without the "u" word.
"It wasn't ‘unsubstantiated,’" conservative radio host Dana Loesch tweeted. "The media's catering to the Bidens is an in-kind contribution."
Washington Free Beacon investigative reporter Chuck Ross tweeted that he had a source who told him the FEC does not call the Biden article "unsubstantiated," emphasizing that was squarely the Times' language.
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Others, like the Federalist's Mollie Hemingway, observed that the Times should not be one to preach.