The Media’s ‘Russian Disinformation’ Canard

For many in the press, it’s not about investigating the alleged abuses of the powerful. It’s about getting Democrats elected.

by David Harsanyi for National Review

Nothing like this has ever happened in modern American journalism.

There’s been incessant bias, sure. Events and stories have been ignored, of course. There have been loads of smears. We were just subjected to four years of Russian “collusion” fabulism. But now, most of the institutional media is openly colluding — and pressuring Big Tech — to suppress a story that might damage their chosen presidential candidate. Journalists have become our censors. That’s definitely new.

Those working to black out and discredit the New York Post’s scoop regarding emails found on Hunter Biden’s laptop keep asserting that they’re unable to verify the information. Anything that hurts Joe Biden is a “dangerous distraction” foisted on the American people by nefarious Russians.

“Russian disinformation” has become the single laziest, dumbest, and most cynical rationalization for journalistic malpractice and political activism over the last four years. Journalists, after all, are in possession of a highly sophisticated method of bypassing foreign “disinformation.” It’s called “asking the candidate a question.” Yet, as far as I can tell, they’ve queried Biden as often about his favorite flavor of ice cream as they have about Hunter’s emails.

As of this writing, no one in Biden camp has denied the veracity of the Post’s reporting. If the emails were fake, you better believe we’d be hearing about it. Biden’s spokespeople, in fact, have been more honest about the emails than cable news networks. On Fox News, a Biden surrogate admitted this morning, “I don’t think anybody is saying they are inauthentic.” She’s wrong.

CNN’s John Harwood, and dozens of other “correspondents” and reporters, claim, without offering a scintilla of evidence, that the story is “Russian disinformation.”

House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff, who’s been spoon-feeding a compliant media a torrent of disinformation for four years, maintains that Hunter’s emails are coming “from the Kremlin.”

More than 50 former senior intelligence officials — some of whom have been deceiving the American public for decades, such as Jim Clapper and John Brennan — signed a letter maintaining that the Post’s story “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

Those cunning Russians had somehow induced Hunter Biden to leave his laptop filled with incriminating pictures, emails, and texts at a Delaware computer-repair shop. Really, what can’t the Ruskies do?

The problem is that Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe says that Hunter’s emails are “not part of some Russian disinformation campaign.” Another senior intelligence official told the Washington Examiner: “What Ratcliffe said is 100% correct. There has been no intelligence community assessment or information that the IC has gotten to suggest in any way that the Hunter Biden laptop story is a Russian disinformation operation.”

Journalists have every reason to be skeptical of government officials. As they ought to be of Adam Schiff’s claims, too. Indeed, it’s part of the job description. But the fact is, the Post’s scoop is far more transparent about sourcing than the majority of Russia-collusion pieces — based in part on disinformation provided by the Steele Dossier. The media has invented a new standard for this occasion.

And, by the way, they don’t need to know if all the emails are genuine. Hunter’s tragic life shouldn’t be of importance to voters. But the emails and texts that implicate Joe Biden as a beneficiary of Hunter’s shady leveraging of the Obama administration surely deserve scrutiny.

Indeed, Biden’s camp hasn’t really denied that the vice president met with the Burisma executive who was paying his son $50,000 a month, either. Biden, who admittedly pressured Ukraine to fire Viktor Shokin, a prosecutor who may have been investigating Burisma even as his son was being paid for a no-show job, once claimed he knew nothing about Hunter’s business dealings. Did Joe not discuss his son’s gig when he allegedly met this Burisma executive? Has anyone asked him?

Our suddenly incurious media spent four years probing whether Trump was financially compromised by a foreign power. What happened? Isn’t it fair to ask Joe whether he profited from the relationships his son forged with Chinese Communists? Or was it the Russians who arranged for Hunter to hitch a ride to Beijing on Air Force Two when conducting business?

We don’t know. The New York Times has the budget to send reporters to dig into the adoption history of Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett’s young child, but evidently doesn’t have the bandwidth to ask the presidential frontrunner whether he was enriched by machinations of his unscrupulous adult child.

I have now read more process stories about the Post’s newsroom than I have about emails claiming that the Joe Biden allegedly took money from a Chicom company. One such piece, giddily retweeted by CNN’s media “reporters,” notes that Fox News Channel’s news side — still, sometimes praised for its professionalism — had passed on the story when Rudy Giuliani first brought it to them.

Maybe that’s true, maybe that’s just Chinese disinformation. (That’s how this works, right?) But what we do know is that since then, Fox News has obtained a photo of Hunter Biden’s signature on paperwork for the computer-repair shop in Delaware, which would prove the hard drive was obtained legally. Fox News has also verified the email in which Hunter alleges that “the Big Guy” was taking a cut from his Chinese scam. Why haven’t CNN, MSNBC, NBC, ABC, New York Times, Washington Post, or the dozens of other major news outlets reported on those stories?

It’s a rhetorical question, of course. The disingenuous and paranoid answer is always “Russia.”

In reality, most reporters are simply attempting to avoid repeating 2016, when they properly reported Hillary Clinton’s criminal behavior. The consequence, of course, was their beloved candidate losing. The daring remnant who take their jobs seriously, on the other hand, are now being cowed by the mob.

Whatever the case, one thing remains clear: For many in political journalism, it’s not about investigating the alleged abuses of the powerful. It’s about getting Democrats elected.