NPR Editor Reveals Why Station Ignored Hunter Biden Laptop Story - 'The Laptop Was Newsworthy'
Anti-Trump bias was the reason NPR refused to report on the Hunter Biden laptop when its contents were first revealed, according to a top editor.
After former President Donald Trump was elected in 2016, NPR’s coverage “veered toward efforts to damage or topple Trump’s presidency,” Uri Berliner, a senior business editor at NPR, wrote in a Tuesday Op-Ed for The Free Press.
Berliner used the laptop story as one example.
In October 2020, the New York Post reported on the illicit contents of a hard drive from a computer Hunter Biden had left at a Delaware repair shop.
Although the story was suppressed by Big Tech companies and dismissed as Russian disinformation by “dozens of former and current intelligence officials,” as Berliner noted, the contents of the laptop have since been proved authentic.
However, “with the election only weeks away, NPR turned a blind eye,” Berliner wrote.
“Here’s how NPR’s managing editor for news at the time explained the thinking: ‘We don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions.’
“But it wasn’t a pure distraction, or a product of Russian disinformation,” Berliner wrote. “The laptop did belong to Hunter Biden. Its contents revealed his connection to the corrupt world of multimillion-dollar influence peddling and its possible implications for his father.
“The laptop was newsworthy. But the timeless journalistic instinct of following a hot story lead was being squelched. During a meeting with colleagues, I listened as one of NPR’s best and most fair-minded journalists said it was good we weren’t following the laptop story because it could help Trump.”
“We could face up to where we’ve gone wrong. News organizations don’t go in for that kind of reckoning. But there’s a good reason for NPR to be the first: we’re the ones with the word ‘public’ in our name.” @uriberliner‘s hope for a U.S. media institution. https://t.co/EclQJO838a pic.twitter.com/CvFfSoL3xx
— The Free Press (@TheFP) April 9, 2024
That was not the only time NPR strayed, according to Berliner.
During the Russian collusion hoax, he said the station “hitched our wagon to Trump’s most visible antagonist, Representative Adam Schiff.”
Berliner called Schiff “NPR’s guiding hand, its ever-present muse,” noting that he was interviewed about Russiagate 25 times and that “Schiff talking points became the drumbeat of NPR news reports.”
He also described NPR’s dismissal of the lab leak theory for the origin of COVID-19 as a case of “politics … blotting out the curiosity and independence that ought to have been driving our work.”
Berliner said NPR has not changed, as shown by its coverage of Israel’s war against Hamas.
“We have approached the Israel-Hamas war and its spillover onto streets and campuses through the ‘intersectional’ lens that has jumped from the faculty lounge to newsrooms. Oppressor versus oppressed,” he wrote.
“That’s meant highlighting the suffering of Palestinians at almost every turn while downplaying the atrocities of October 7, overlooking how Hamas intentionally puts Palestinian civilians in peril, and giving little weight to the explosion of antisemitic hate around the world.”
Edith Chapin, NPR’s acting chief content officer, defended the station.
“I and my colleagues on the leadership team strongly disagree with Uri’s assessment of the quality of our journalism and the integrity of our newsroom processes,” she said, according to the New York Post.
“With all this said, none of our work is above scrutiny or critique.”
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