MRC Hides How It Corrected Dozens Of Posts After Hunter Biden Informant Arrested For Lying

The Media Research Center has been obsessed with attacking Hunter Biden as a way to drive him to suicide and ruin his father, President Biden, by breathlessly pushing Republican-promoted attacks on his business dealings. But that narrative took a big blow when a key informant against Hunter, Alexander Smirnov, was arrested for making a statement he knew was false — that a Ukrainian company had paid Hunter and President Biden $5 million each as a bribe to protect the company. Smirnov was later detained to prevent him from fleeing the country.

On the day Smirnov was arrested, MRC executive Tim Graham huffily tweeted:

We’re updating any NewsBusters posts we had alleging Joe and Hunter Biden took $5M bribes, adding the Weiss indictment news.

We can notice news that Democrats like. Democrat media outlets tend to only notice news that Democrats like.

Funny, we don’t recall the MRC noticing the news that the story by Fox News’ Bret Baier before the 2016 election that Hillary Clinton’s arrest was imminent — a story the MRC embraced so hard that Brent Bozell declared that “We will report developments on this continuing cover-up every hour from here on out” — had been discredited and retracted, because it never told its readers about that important development.

Surprisingly given its track record, the MRC did address this, appending this “editor’s note’ to a whopping 47 posts: “On February 15, Justice Department Counsel David Weiss indicted FBI informant Alexander Smirnov on two felony counts of making a false statement and creating a false and fictitious record for claims made to the bureau. The charges are in relation to June 2020 FD-1023 form alleging President Joe Biden and son Hunter Biden received a combined $10 million in a bribery scheme involving the Ukrainian energy company, Burisma.” What it didn’t do, however, is inform its readers that it did this — it placed no notice of the correction on the NewsBusters front page, even though it routinely insists that non-right-wing outlets give their corrections the same prominence that gave to the original incorrect claims.

Even though The Smirnov revelations were so major that it had to correct dozens of posts, the MRC then complained that non-right-wing media covered Smirnov. Graham returned to huff in a Feb. 22 post:

If you expected ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, and NPR would offer a sober and substantive story on James Biden testifying behind closed doors in the House impeachment inquiry on Wednesday night, you’d be deeply disappointed. These networks all aired a story, but the narrative was overwhelmingly focused on indicted FBI confidential informant Alexander Smirnov and his unproven claims that Joe and Hunter Biden were offered $5 million each in bribes.

Overall, the networks offered 920 seconds of coverage focused on Smirnov, and 143 seconds on James Biden. So that’s 86.5 percent for Smirnov, 13.5 percent for Uncle Jimmy. 

— ABC offered 44 seconds of James Biden, to 141 seconds on Smirnov. Anchor David Muir opened: “As our Pierre Thomas tonight asks Republicans in the House, how do you move forward if the main informant was lying?”

[…]

— CBS spent two minutes and five seconds on Smirnov and how he put the impeachment inquiry “in jeopardy,” and just 18 seconds on James Biden, all preposterous denial:

[…]

— PBS presented eight minutes and 22 seconds with a Democrat expert, but seven minutes was devoted to Smirnov, and the rest on Ukraine. The taxpayer-funded network story didn’t even mention James Biden!   

— NPR interviewed their congressional reporter, and only 50 seconds was devoted to James Biden (mostly denials), and the other 204 seconds focused on Smirnov.

Graham censored the fact that the website for which he serves as executive editor corrected dozens of posts because Smirnov was revealed to be a liar.

The next day, Clay Waters similarly complained that PBS covered the “new Russian-interference angle” of Smirnov instead of its preferred right-wing narratives:

On Wednesday, President Biden’s brother James testified in the House impeachment inquiry. The PBS NewsHour aired an eight-minute segment on the Biden impeachment that never mentioned James Biden once. 

Instead, they obsessed over a new Russian-interference angle. 

Recent news that former FBI informant Alexander Smirnov made false allegations about Joe Biden and his son Hunter accepting $5 million bribes from the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma caused much smug rejoicing. In fact, the NewsHour also hammered on this Democrat theme on February 15. 

Waters then switched to whataboutism mode:

On Wednesday, White House reporter Laura Barron-Lopez used a “reliable” guest (from the Obama-Biden administration!) to help condemn the Republicans as willing dupes of Russian disinformation as a presidential election looms. But does Barron-Lopez really not remember the media’s own history of being conduit of Russian disinformation during the Trump years, especially the infamous Trump dossier

[…]

Speaking of disinformation: Remember the infamous dossier falsely alleging Trump ties to Russia, leading to myriad articles accusing Trump of “collusion” with Russia? One infamous article after the game was up, from New York Times’ legal reporter Charlie Savage, insisted “Discredited Steele Dossier Doesn’t Undercut Russia Inquiry.”

Yet the Smirnov revelation evidently not only “undercuts” the Republican impeachment inquiry into Biden, it has Goodman seeing “Reds under the bed”:

Waters didn’t explain how the “Smirnov revelation” doesn’t undercut Republican attacks on the Bidens — and he censored the fact that his employer corrected dozens of posts due that same “Smirnov revelation.”

Jorge Bonilla insisted in a Feb. 29 post that the Smirnov arrest did didn’t undercut Republican attacks on the Bidens:

Hunter Biden went to the Capitol for his closed-door deposition with the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees. This is his makeup day for the depo he blew off in order to deliver a tirade from behind a podium before stomping off the Capitol grounds. The network newscasts fell in formation today, focused on protecting the Bidens and disqualifying the proceedings.

Coverage was nearly identical across the Big Three, touching on some of the same thematic points: a quote from Hunter’s statement denouncing the investigation and calling for it to end, a brief summation of what the investigation is about, and some version of the Smirnov Hoax, to wit: that the controversial FBI FD-1023 (record of confidential informant meeting with agent) with its allegedly false statements contained therein is the entirety of the evidence upon which the impeachment inquiry hinges. 

Of the three, ABC’s coverage was the most extensive and most partisan. Here’s correspondent Rachel Scott, dutifully reciting the Smirnov Hoax:

[…]

The impeachment inquiry was NOT built largely on the FD-1023. There is also the trove of documents contained within the laptop, the damning testimony of the IRS whistleblowers, testimony from Hunter’s several business partners, and the evidence collected in furtherance of Hunter’s indictment on tax charges. But suggesting that the whole thing hangs on the FD-1023 makes it easier to dismiss the whole thing as little more than a fake partisan sham. 

Scott carried the Democrats’ water during a gaggle with House Oversight Chair James Comer, by suggesting that Smirnov’s indictment somehow made the impeachment inquiry illegitimate. 

He too failed to disclose that the discrediting of Smirnov was, in fact, so important to his employer that dozens of posts had to be corrected.