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"After a scandal narrative [about Hunter Biden] failed to gain traction in the mainstream press, conservative media and personalities pivoted to a "meta narrati

"After a scandal narrative [about Hunter Biden] failed to gain traction in the mainstream press, conservative media and personalities pivoted to a "meta narrative" that the press, social media platforms and the "deep state" were suppressing news of the scandal." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biden%E2%80%93Ukraine_conspiracy_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biden%E2%80%93Ukraine_conspira...

makomk 5y ago
What it means by "a scandal narrative failed to gain traction" is that the mainstream press ignored the actual contents of the hack and focused entirely on falsely discrediting the information it contained as fake (a claim which fell apart almost immediately, at least for all the Hunter Biden emails which were politically interesting - something the non-conservative press has actually just started to notice), objections to the morality of using hacked data which are mysteriously absent here, and of course endless articles about how "conservative media" were using it. It's remarkable how whenever something happens that's politically inconvenient to Democrats, most of the US media coverage ends up being about the Republican reaction to it! In fact, that sentence from Wikipedia is a downstream consequence of this ... at least in theory, their policy is to just regurgitate the mainstream media narrative. Remember, too, that the Hunter Biden emails involved the future president of the USA and his family whereas this involves random obscure anonymous internet users that none of the Seattle Times' readers would even have heard of had prior to the press deciding to go after them. It takes an extremely partisan notion of newsworthiness to consider the latter worthy of reporting but not the former.
BoHerfVJrEsq 5y ago
"failed to gain traction in the mainstream press" is an incredibly misleading way to relate what happened. The New York Post broke the story, and Twitter locked their account, ostensibly due to a "hacked materials" policy. But nobody ever actually thought that the materials were hacked. The MSM first said they weren't covering the story because it was Russian disinformation. Later they tried to rewrite history so that the story had simply escaped notice at the time. That's all completely false. It was an ongoing scandal for weeks on Twitter that the NY Post was locked out, and other news outlets were getting hammered on a daily basis for refusing to cover the story. So the story was successfully suppressed in the days leading up to the election. How'd it end up? The story was completely vindicated. It really was Hunter Biden's laptop, those really were his emails. They even had a witness who was a party to the email exchanges explaining who was who. Genuine story of great importance, buried.
naasking 5y ago
Social media platforms literally were suppressing news of the story. That's literally, verifiably true, and the suppression was indeed a bigger scandal than the original story. All of the reasons other media outlets touted for not covering it, and social media touted for suppressing it, are obviously nonsense, as is clear by coverage of literally any other story based on leaked or hacked materials over the past 20 years, including this one.
- user-the-name 5y ago
  You know what? I am pretty happy about dishonest political smear campaigns being suppressed.
  - naasking 5y ago
    And I suppose you get to decide what's dishonest and what's a smear, for all of our benefits of course. Maybe you should take a moment to reflect on the meaning of democratic principles.
    - user-the-name 5y ago
      I think we can let reality make that choice. The things that actually happened, those are OK, and the ones that are made up bullshit, they can go. How about that?
      - naasking 5y ago
        Ok, so the recent independent confirmations that the laptop's emails are genuine indicates the original story was not entirely made up bullshit, correct? That there's some warranted suspicion there. And the 5 years of reporting that Trump was a compromised Russian asset since the 80s are just as much bullshit as all the Fox News reporting that Obama was a secret Muslim and not a real American citizen, yes? And you would also support suppressing those bogus claims about Trump just as much as you would support suppressing those claims about Obama. Just to make sure we're all being impartial about reality here, and not treating one set of claims preferentially because of who they're about or where they come from.
Chris2048 5y ago
A failed scandal narrative doesn't imply anything about the underlying facts, even though "narrative" has a implication of falsehood about it. That article has some pretty mixed signals, both in the "intelligence" section and the one about Murdoch sources. In any case, the WSJ has since published: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-hunter-biden-laptop-is-real-11625868661 https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-hunter-biden-laptop-is-real... https://www.wsj.com/articles/vindication-over-hunter-biden-emails-new-york-post-politico-11632521169 https://www.wsj.com/articles/vindication-over-hunter-biden-e... WP describes WSJ: "Most editors consider The Washington Post generally reliable." But also, these articles are critical of the majority of media outlets overage. So, what are we to conclude?

makomk 5y ago

What it means by "a scandal narrative failed to gain traction" is that the mainstream press ignored the actual contents of the hack and focused entirely on falsely discrediting the information it contained as fake (a claim which fell apart almost immediately, at least for all the Hunter Biden emails which were politically interesting - something the non-conservative press has actually just started to notice), objections to the morality of using hacked data which are mysteriously absent here, and of course endless articles about how "conservative media" were using it. It's remarkable how whenever something happens that's politically inconvenient to Democrats, most of the US media coverage ends up being about the Republican reaction to it! In fact, that sentence from Wikipedia is a downstream consequence of this ... at least in theory, their policy is to just regurgitate the mainstream media narrative. Remember, too, that the Hunter Biden emails involved the future president of the USA and his family whereas this involves random obscure anonymous internet users that none of the Seattle Times' readers would even have heard of had prior to the press deciding to go after them. It takes an extremely partisan notion of newsworthiness to consider the latter worthy of reporting but not the former.

BoHerfVJrEsq 5y ago

"failed to gain traction in the mainstream press" is an incredibly misleading way to relate what happened. The New York Post broke the story, and Twitter locked their account, ostensibly due to a "hacked materials" policy. But nobody ever actually thought that the materials were hacked. The MSM first said they weren't covering the story because it was Russian disinformation. Later they tried to rewrite history so that the story had simply escaped notice at the time. That's all completely false. It was an ongoing scandal for weeks on Twitter that the NY Post was locked out, and other news outlets were getting hammered on a daily basis for refusing to cover the story. So the story was successfully suppressed in the days leading up to the election. How'd it end up? The story was completely vindicated. It really was Hunter Biden's laptop, those really were his emails. They even had a witness who was a party to the email exchanges explaining who was who. Genuine story of great importance, buried.

naasking 5y ago

Social media platforms literally were suppressing news of the story. That's literally, verifiably true, and the suppression was indeed a bigger scandal than the original story. All of the reasons other media outlets touted for not covering it, and social media touted for suppressing it, are obviously nonsense, as is clear by coverage of literally any other story based on leaked or hacked materials over the past 20 years, including this one.

user-the-name 5y ago
You know what? I am pretty happy about dishonest political smear campaigns being suppressed.
- naasking 5y ago
  And I suppose you get to decide what's dishonest and what's a smear, for all of our benefits of course. Maybe you should take a moment to reflect on the meaning of democratic principles.
  - user-the-name 5y ago
    I think we can let reality make that choice. The things that actually happened, those are OK, and the ones that are made up bullshit, they can go. How about that?
    - naasking 5y ago
      Ok, so the recent independent confirmations that the laptop's emails are genuine indicates the original story was not entirely made up bullshit, correct? That there's some warranted suspicion there. And the 5 years of reporting that Trump was a compromised Russian asset since the 80s are just as much bullshit as all the Fox News reporting that Obama was a secret Muslim and not a real American citizen, yes? And you would also support suppressing those bogus claims about Trump just as much as you would support suppressing those claims about Obama. Just to make sure we're all being impartial about reality here, and not treating one set of claims preferentially because of who they're about or where they come from.

Chris2048 5y ago

A failed scandal narrative doesn't imply anything about the underlying facts, even though "narrative" has a implication of falsehood about it. That article has some pretty mixed signals, both in the "intelligence" section and the one about Murdoch sources. In any case, the WSJ has since published: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-hunter-biden-laptop-is-real-11625868661 https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-hunter-biden-laptop-is-real... https://www.wsj.com/articles/vindication-over-hunter-biden-emails-new-york-post-politico-11632521169 https://www.wsj.com/articles/vindication-over-hunter-biden-e... WP describes WSJ: "Most editors consider The Washington Post generally reliable." But also, these articles are critical of the majority of media outlets overage. So, what are we to conclude?