The Post has been leading the charge on digging up Hunter Biden’s sleazy influence-peddling operations and other shady business ventures since fall 2020. But to the great minds at Politico, we’ve merely milked “the personal life of the president’s son” as “daily fodder” while his “his overseas business relationships remain a focus of major mainstream news outlets.”
Let’s get one thing clear: We were the ones shining bright lights on Hunter’s crooked deals in China, Ukraine and elsewhere. Those “mainstream media outlets” — including Politico — either averted their eyes or suggested it was all Russian disinfo, only to recant after their favored candidate (i.e. Hunter’s dad, a k a the “big guy”) was safely in the Oval Office.
That’s not focus: it’s obfuscation.
Politico’s line here is utter bull. And its attempt to assign after-the-fact credit on revealing Hunter’s ugly shenanigans to anyone but The Post is journalistic malpractice. It’s as transparent as the year-plus-late so-called “authentication” of our reporting by The New York Times and The Washington Post — and as pathetic.
Politico’s smearing sneer again exposes a festering problem in modern journalism: incestuous ties to government insiders, as journos fluff politicians to get access, hype up trivial non-stories and blow smoke around real governance issues (like, say, when the veep’s son was likely trying sell access to his dad, who then repeatedly lied about it before and after becoming president).
All in the service of protecting their insular, sanctimonious worldview, in which truth doesn’t matter if it comes from an unapproved source and narrative trumps everything else.
A line variously attributed to William Randolph Hearst and Lord Northwell sums it up nicely: “News is something somebody doesn’t want printed; all else is advertising.”
Our paper is in the business of reporting actual news. Not catering its journalism to the bien-pensant whims of a Beltway audience with their heads buried in the sand when it comes to facts that endanger their pet politicians.
