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Dropped on the electorate? I distinctly remember major news outlets outright saying they weren't going to cover it and dismissed it as Russian propaganda right

Dropped on the electorate? I distinctly remember major news outlets outright saying they weren't going to cover it and dismissed it as Russian propaganda right after the story came out. I also distinctly remember the insinuation that it was totally fake, somehow forged, or pure disinformation. By all accounts it should have been an October Surprise but it wasn't because it was starved of attention. Turns out, though, it was real and the contents on the drive have been reported on after the election - and even then not with the level of detail and urgency that one would expect of an unbiased media.

jacobolus 4y ago
At least some of the emails were real (but not particularly interesting or scandalous). You can read about them here https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/hunter-biden-laptop-data-examined/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/hunter-... > Thousands of emails purportedly from the laptop computer of Hunter Biden, President Biden’s son, are authentic communications that can be verified through cryptographic signatures from Google and other technology companies, say two security experts who examined the data at the request of The Washington Post. ¶ The vast majority of the data — and most of the nearly 129,000 emails it contained — could not be verified by either of the two security experts who reviewed the data for The Post. Neither found clear evidence of tampering in their examinations, but some of the records that might have helped verify contents were not available for analysis, they said.[...] ¶ Among the reasons for the inconclusive findings was sloppy handling of the data, which damaged some records. The experts found the data had been repeatedly accessed and copied by people other than Hunter Biden over nearly three years. How those emails (and other materials) were originally obtained and how they made their way onto the hard drive in question is impossible to determine. Because there isn’t really much story or scandal in the emails themselves (similar to the Blumenthal and Podesta hacked email leaks from 2016), the whole “conspiracy coverup” angle has been played up endlessly by breathless propagandists. But even if you take a leap and assume that the laptop story is true precisely as claimed, the better explanation for the media reaction is: serious media outlets who were repeatedly burned by credulously reprinting Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon’s (later proven false) claims wised up and decided to be a bit more careful this time.
- cato_the_elder 4y ago
  > the better explanation for the media reaction is: serious media outlets who were repeatedly burned by credulously reprinting Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon’s (later proven false) claims wised up and decided to be a bit more careful this time. Come on man, we all know the reason the story [1] was suppressed [2] is that the establishment, rightly or not, was afraid of another four years of Trump. Then, they made up all kinds of post-facto reasons for it (policy against hacked material, etc.). [1]: Which, as you correctly mentioned earlier, was intended to swing votes. [2]: Not only from the mainstream media, but also from social media, to the extent you couldn't send it in DMs to others.

jacobolus 4y ago

At least some of the emails were real (but not particularly interesting or scandalous). You can read about them here https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/hunter-biden-laptop-data-examined/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/hunter-... > Thousands of emails purportedly from the laptop computer of Hunter Biden, President Biden’s son, are authentic communications that can be verified through cryptographic signatures from Google and other technology companies, say two security experts who examined the data at the request of The Washington Post. ¶ The vast majority of the data — and most of the nearly 129,000 emails it contained — could not be verified by either of the two security experts who reviewed the data for The Post. Neither found clear evidence of tampering in their examinations, but some of the records that might have helped verify contents were not available for analysis, they said.[...] ¶ Among the reasons for the inconclusive findings was sloppy handling of the data, which damaged some records. The experts found the data had been repeatedly accessed and copied by people other than Hunter Biden over nearly three years. How those emails (and other materials) were originally obtained and how they made their way onto the hard drive in question is impossible to determine. Because there isn’t really much story or scandal in the emails themselves (similar to the Blumenthal and Podesta hacked email leaks from 2016), the whole “conspiracy coverup” angle has been played up endlessly by breathless propagandists. But even if you take a leap and assume that the laptop story is true precisely as claimed, the better explanation for the media reaction is: serious media outlets who were repeatedly burned by credulously reprinting Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon’s (later proven false) claims wised up and decided to be a bit more careful this time.

cato_the_elder 4y ago
> the better explanation for the media reaction is: serious media outlets who were repeatedly burned by credulously reprinting Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon’s (later proven false) claims wised up and decided to be a bit more careful this time. Come on man, we all know the reason the story [1] was suppressed [2] is that the establishment, rightly or not, was afraid of another four years of Trump. Then, they made up all kinds of post-facto reasons for it (policy against hacked material, etc.). [1]: Which, as you correctly mentioned earlier, was intended to swing votes. [2]: Not only from the mainstream media, but also from social media, to the extent you couldn't send it in DMs to others.