Modern media's failure to recognize GOP deception in the Hunter Biden e-mails story

  

  A recent New York Post article with claims about Hunter Biden's behavior while he was an adviser at the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma represents a return to the tactics the GOP employed in 2016 with spurious claims over John Podesta's e-mails.  Instead of recognizing this recycling of campaign tactics, the American media is making many of the same mistakes that they made in 2016, and there is a very real danger that their failure could pave the way for Trump's re-election.  While we should never take Trump's "the media is the enemy of the people" remarks seriously, we should heed the warnings of former Daily Show host Jon Stewart who repeatedly admonished 24 hour cable news outlets for being lazy, gullible and repetitive.  American citizens have a right to expect our media outlets to do a better job of putting the pieces together.  In the Hunter Biden case, a laptop which the GOP is claiming once belonged to Hunter Biden was "discovered" at a computer repair shop in Delaware, and that laptop was then turned over to Rudy Giuliani who is insisting that he found e-mails, text messages, and other information on the laptop that is potentially damaging to the Biden campaign, as that information may be used to compromise Biden and render him susceptible to blackmail.  This effort by Republicans is a repeat of propaganda tactics they've used before, and has the appearance of yet another attempt to distract attention from profiteering by the Trump family, and to interfere in the outcome of a Presidential election. 

    The overall pattern of the 2016 and now the 2020 GOP propaganda efforts was thoroughly explained in Robert Mueller's report on the 2016 election, and should be familiar to every American.  The process begins with the Russian GRU hacking an e-mail server and stealing the e-mail archive of someone who has ties to the Democratic candidate.  In 2016 the key person was John Podesta, the chair of  Hillary Clinton's Presidential campaign.  The GRU then doctors those messages and takes items out of context, to create the appearance of scandal where none actually exists.  The e-mail messages are then released to propaganda outlets that are friendly to the Trump campaign.  In 2016 that was Wikileaks, led by Russian GRU asset Julian Assange, and in 2020 it's the New York Post, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch, who also owns FOX News. 

    Republican Party propaganda outlets like FOX, Breitbart and Newsmax repeat the bogus claims endlessly, falsely insisting said claims are "devastating" for the Democratic candidate, and proof that person is not fit to hold public office.  In an interesting twist, the Trump friendly propagandists also have a tell: the fake story is often released as a means of trying to distract from another story that is a huge problem for the Trump campaign.  In 2016, the story about John Podesta's e-mails dropped shortly after the Access Hollywood video where Trump was heard saying: "Just grab her by the pussy".  In 2020 the bogus Hunter Biden story coincided with a news story about Donald Trump's son sitting for a deposition in an investigation conducted by the New York State Attorney General of insurance and tax fraud by the Trump Organization.  Conservative propagandists will frequently use the bogus claims to try to distract attention from the story that the Trump campaign is actually concerned about.  As an example, the conservative propagandist might say: "I mean come on, who really cares about any charges from the New York State Attorney General (show a picture of Letitia James who is a black woman to raise the hackles of conservative media outlets primarily older, white, and often very racist audience) and I think anyone can see that this is just an effort to distract from the devastating revelations from the Hunter Biden e-mails."  With the Hunter Biden story, Republicans are even trying to link Hunter Biden's laptop to the Q-Anon conspiracy theory by implying that child pornography was found on the laptop that they are alleging once belonged to Hunter Biden. 

    Mainstrean 24 hour cable news networks and broadcast news programs end up covering the story, but tend to do so in a blinkered fashion, attributing too much weight to the false claims being promoted by right-wing propagandists, failing to piece together the different parts of the story to recognize what's actually going on, and even questioning the targets of the spurious claims more aggressively than they do the originators.  Right now the Hunter Biden story is still in news headlines and is an on-going situation, looking back on this story in a few years, people may wonder why the mainstream media outlets failed to recognize the pattern of campaign interference that was demonstrated in 2016; why there was a general failure to advise viewers to be skeptical of the claims, given that they originated with Rudy Giuliani, who was the target of a Russian Influence operation, and has ties to Russian Oligarch Andriy Derkach; and why they failed to notice that threats of subpeonas and investigations of social media companies by Republican Senators created the appearance of a party-wide conspiracy to promote Russian propaganda efforts.  Some may choose to paraphrase Robert Mueller's report on 2016 election interference and declare that "the entire Republican Party, including House and Senate leadership were aware of Russian efforts to interfere in the 2020 election and intended to benefit from those effortts electorally." 

    While the American people should never fall prey to Trump's "the media is the enemy of the people" nonsense, we do have a right as media consumers to insist that media outlets should do better.  Jon Stewart was correct that American 24 hour news outlets are often guilty of laziness, repetition and sensationalism.  Some decline in the quality of news coverage is probably inevitable in our current environment.  There is no question that American media outlets have been cowed by constant harassment and threats from Trump and other GOP leaders.  There is no doubt that journalists must feel exhausted by the relentless pace of reports of corruption and self-dealing by the Trump Administration.  Nonetheless, as we approach the 2020 Presidential election, there is no excuse for a media wide failure to recognize a return to such an obvious pattern of election interference.  Conservatives, given their natural tendency towards hyperbole and false-equivalencies will insist any attempt to describe the nature of their election interference is "an attack on certain media outlets and the Republican Party for reporting the truth about Hunter Biden," and news outlets should immediately call out those kinds of claims as nonsense.  There's absolutely nothing wrong with telling cable and television news that it's understandable if people are feeling tired, but with a Presidential election so near, they need to up their game. 

Image credit: Edward R. Murrow, courtesy of Wikimedia Images https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Edward_R._Murrow#/media/File:Edward_r_murrow_challenge_of_ideas_screenshot_3.jpg

(Given Murrow's role in taking down corrupt Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy, and his reputation as a great American journalist and a pioneer of television news, I felt that image with what some would consider a disappointed looking stare was the perfect lead-in to an article that asked American media outlets to do a better job of reporting.) 

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