It is never too late to say you are sorry. And many of us in the media, most of us perhaps, would do well to offer such an apology over the way we initially covered — or did not cover — the Hunter Biden laptop story, a tale we thought false but which later proved to be at least partly true.
Do you remember the details?
Back in October 2020, just weeks before the presidential election, the New York Post — a right-wing tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch — published what it claimed were details of a “smoking-gun email”. The email was purported to reveal that Hunter Biden had introduced a Ukrainian businessman to his father while he was serving as vice president. “The blockbuster correspondence — which flies in the face of Joe Biden’s claim that he’s ‘never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings’ — is contained in a massive trove of data recovered from a laptop computer,” the Post’s article read.
The right-wing media leapt on the story as supposed proof the Democratic candidate had improperly used his former office to help his son. Hunter’s past struggles with drug addiction were often put front-and-center in these stories.
The approach of the rest of the media was, to say the least, very cautious indeed. Many were worried they were being fed more disinformation amid a sea of false claims contained in documents such as the “Steele Dossier” and warnings that Russia was again seeking to interfere with the election. “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say,” read a headline in Politico, citing a letter from 50 former spies saying the material “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation”.
There were plenty of common-sense reasons to be sceptical about the unlikely-sounding tale. The Post said the email had been obtained from a laptop “dropped off at a repair shop in Biden’s home state of Delaware in April 2019, according to the store’s owner”.
Furthermore, the laptop apparently contained a “raunchy” sex video featuring Biden’s son. Finally, the story said the store’s owner made a copy of the information and passed it to a lawyer working with former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, one of Donald Trump’s most loyal and conspiracy-minded supporters. The whole thing just smelled wrong.
Biden snapped at a CBS reporter who asked him about it: “I have no response — it’s another smear campaign, right up your alley.”
And because it felt like disinformation, it was treated as such by Twitter, who for several months blocked the story being posted, or even being shared by direct message. At a congressional hearing, then-CEO Jack Dorsey later said: “We recognise it as a mistake that we made, both in terms of the intention of the policy and also the enforcement action of not allowing people to share it publicly or privately.“
We now know at least part of the story was correct.
In December 2020, Hunter Biden admitted he was being investigated by the Department of Justice over taxes. “I take this matter very seriously but I am confident that a professional and objective review of these matters will demonstrate that I handled my affairs legally and appropriately,” he said.
In October 2022, the Washington Post said a grand jury investigation had “gathered what they believe is sufficient evidence to charge him with tax crimes and a false statement related to a gun purchase”.
The reason we are talking about this now is that last Friday, journalist Matt Taibbi published a lengthy Twitter thread based on documents provided to him by Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk. These documents purported to show how the social media network suppressed the Hunter Biden story in the final weeks of the campaign. “Some of the first tools for controlling speech were designed to combat the likes of spam and financial fraudsters,” Taibbi wrote. “Slowly, over time, Twitter staff and executives began to find more and more uses for these tools.”
Reaction to Taibbi’s thread fell along predictable lines. Many reporters and Democrats claimed the information simply showed that Twitter had been handling requests from both sides, and that some of the tweets removed at the request of the Biden campaign were naked pictures of the candidate’s son.
“Matt Taibbi... what sad, disgraceful downfall. I swear, kids, he did good work back in the day,” tweeted writer Wajahat Ali. “Should be a cautionary tale for everyone. Selling your soul for the richest white nationalist on Earth. Well, he'll eat well for the rest of his life I guess. But is it worth it?”
Glenn Greenwald took another position. “Watching little obedient dweebs at NBC, CNN and the Daily Beast claim Matt Taibbi is a servant to power is the most brazen case of projection I've ever seen,” he wrote. “Taibbi spent his career and still does exposing Wall Street and CIA's lies (Russiagate). They are their loyal mouthpieces.”
Who knows for sure what impact the suppression of the story just weeks before election had? We are aware of the harm suffered by Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016 when the FBI revealed it was investigating use of an unauthorized use of server. Biden beat Trump by almost eight million votes, but the presidential election is based on an electoral college, not a popular vote. Would greater focus on the story by the mainstream media have sent more votes towards Trump and away from Biden?
Trump certainly thinks so. Over the weekend, the former president responded in typically wild fashion, and called for the constitution to be suspended. “Do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” he wrote, on the far-right social media network Truth Social. “Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!”
It’s unclear what Musk’s master plan is for Twitter. Is he trying to destroy the platform he spent $44bn to buy, or does he truly want to make it into a place for “freer”, less regulated speech?
Plenty of people will have seen Musk’s handing of the internal documents to Taibbi as nothing less than another stunt designed to get people’s attention. All of that may be true. But a lesson we could learn from this is that it’s vital we, as journalists, give a fair hearing and even-handed treatment to accusations that go to the very heart of a Democratic system. It is even more important we treat those allegations seriously when they’re made by people we may not trust and may even not even like.
