Washington Post columnist Megan McArdle blasted the legacy media for its collective dismissal of the Hunter Biden laptop story during the 2020 presidential election.
In a piece published on Saturday, McArdle began by noting what a friend coined was a "growing 'epistemic closure' on the right" that filters out what is reported in the distrusted liberal media.
"This frets the mainstream media. It is our job to provide information, so naturally we worry when so many customers aren’t buying… In fact, we in the mainstream have been so busy denouncing ‘fake news’ that we failed to notice we’re developing a wee disinformation problem of our own — much of which has stemmed, ironically, from our efforts to fight disinformation on the right," McArdle told readers.
Hunter Biden has been engulfed in a federal criminal investigation throughout his father's presidency. (Photo by Teresa Kroeger/Getty Images) (Photo by Teresa Kroeger)
She then turned to the New York Post's bombshell reporting about Hunter Biden's laptop, which included emails that implicated his father, then-Democratic nominee Joe Biden, and how the "information gatekeepers scrambled to keep this story from polluting the mainstream’s pristine infoscape" using various tactics like calling the story "Russian disinformation" or a "distraction" to Big Tech's suppression of the report.
"That’s a whole lot of effort to suppress a story that seems to be … true?" McArdle wrote, citing The New York Times' recent report that authenticated the laptop's contents. "One week into the ‘Oops, it was real’ news cycle, I have now heard all the excuses as to why this actually is an instance of journalism and tech moderation working like they should. It was unverified, I’ve heard. Too close to an election. And even if the emails were real, they may have been obtained illegally — can’t have that!"
McArdle pointed to the media's hypocrisy when it comes to stories that "made conservatives look bad," referring to the Times' September 2020 report about then-President Trump's tax documents that were "likely" illegally leaked but "Twitter didn’t block it from being shared."
The columnist also listed the discredited Steele dossier and the unverified sexual assault accusations against Justice Brett Kavanaugh as examples of how media outlets "relaxed their journalistic standards" while being "considerably more skeptical" towards Biden accuser Tara Reade and videos released by Project Veritas.
The New York Times on Wednesday subtly confirmed the Hunter Biden laptop story that was largely written off by mainstream news outlets as disinformation when the New York Post first reported it ahead of the 2020 presidential election and media watchdogs want to see the organizations that initially dismissed it correct their reporting. (Getty images | New York Post)
"As social psychologist Jonathan Haidt puts it, the difference in mainstream reporting is the difference between can and must. When it comes to stories that flatter Democrats, we often ask ‘Can I believe it?’ If it’s not obviously false, we do. But if the story flatters the right, we are more likely to ask ‘Must I believe it?’ If we can find any reason to disbelieve, we take it — and keep the story off our pages," McArdle wrote. "The obvious retort is that the same thing is happening on the right, only more so. And indeed, some right-wing media have gone much further with crazy election conspiracies than any mainstream outlet ever did with Russophobia. But pointing that out doesn’t do a thing to solve the problem."
"An actual solution will require the recognition that we in the mainstream media are part of the problem: We are not trusted because we are not entirely trustworthy. That is not the only thing that will have to be fixed to heal our epistemic divide. But it would make a very good start," McArdle added.
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Podcast giant Joe Rogan similarly blasted the media for "stifling" information that emerged from the New York Post report on the Bidens during the 2020 election.
"It's not that I'm a Trump supporter. I'm not I didn't vote for him. I didn't vote for any Republican ever in my life. But you're looking at something that's real information, and you're hiding it from people because you don't like the result that you think is going to come out of that information. That's not- that's not how we're supposed to be doing things," Rogan said.