The Media Research Center labored hard to portray Donald Trump as an innocent victim during his New York trial (which was negated by the fact that he was found guilty on all 34 counts he faced). By contrast, in the runup to Hunter Biden’s trial on gun-related charges, the MRC lashed out at anyone who dared to treat him like a human being instead of the right-wing punching bag it has treated him as for years. That contempt continued as the trial got under way. Curtis Houck whined in a June 4 post:
Following nauseatingly soft and sympathetic-seeking coverage on Monday morning and evening about the first Hunter Biden trial, Tuesday morning brought about even more of the same about the “emotional” First Son “getting support from the First Family” who’ve “rush[ed] to his defense”. The coverage disparity grew even more stark with a total of 23 minutes and 30 seconds through three news cycles vs. 49 minutes and 47 seconds at this point in the Trump trial.
ABC’s Good Morning America again led the way with senior national correspondent Terry Moran boasting “[p]rosecutors say this is a simple case and it’s moving quickly.”
[…]Moran made sure to try to have viewers feel bad for Hunter: “Also in the courtroom, First Lady Jill Biden, Hunter’s sister Ashley, and his wife Alyssa. Hunter Biden at times growing emotional seeing his family at his side. He said in the past that they saved his life.”
Like the good party mouthpiece that he is, Moran concluded with a rehashing of President Biden’s Monday statement in support of Hunter.
Funny, we don’t recall Houck and his fellow MRCers admitting they were party mouthpieces with their soft coverage of Trump during his trial.
Nicholas Fondacaro worked his Hunter-hatred into his daily hate-watch of “The View”:
Hunter Biden was finally brought to trial this week to answer for his alleged crime of lying on a federal background check form when purchasing a firearm, a felony. But ABC’s Alyssa Farah Griffin, one of The View’s faux-conservatives, finally found a trial she didn’t like. After previously cheering on the ethically dubious trial of former President Trump, on Tuesday’s show she was decrying the trials as a distraction from the real issues.
For months prior to Tuesday, Farah Griffin had touted the trial against Trump because polling data suggested that a non-insignificant portion of Republican voters would ditch him if he was convicted. But now that a conviction had been scored, she was finished with all the trial coverage now that Biden was under the microscope.
“I’m not particularly interested in this case but I think I am frustrated this election cycle the media coverage feels like it’s trial this, conviction this, this trial, him walking into the courtroom,” she huffed.
Jorge Bonilla served up a second daily trial roundup — something it didn’t do at all during Trump’s trial — and once again pounded the right-wing narrative on Hunter’s laptop:
With today’s coverage of the happenings of the Hunter Biden gun trial comes a major piece of vindication for anyone reporting or attempting to report on the existence (and, subsequently, the contents) of Hunter Biden’s “Laptop From Hell”. The major network newscasts (mostly) reported on the laptop, albeit tangentially and reluctantly.
[…]NBC and ABC opened their reports with admissions that the laptop was a source of evidence in the trial, and then correspondents Ryan Nobles and Terry Moran, respectively, made one more mention of the laptop in their report. But that was it. Blink and you miss it.
But, having worked hundreds of trials in previous professional endeavors, I know that each individual piece of evidence requires authentication testimony before being admitted as a trial exhibit.
[…]CBS were the lone holdouts, with no mention of the laptop whatsoever. Perhaps the Tiffany Network still believes the 51 former intel officers. Or in the Tooth Fairy.
Shame on anyone still pushing the lie that Hunter Biden’s “Laptop From Hell” was Russian disinformation, or otherwise a fabrication. Suppression of that story was, in and of itself, a grotesque act of election interference.
The truth can’t be suppressed forever.
Yes, Bonilla linked to the MRC’s bogus conspiracy theory that is based on buying polls from partisan right-wing pollsters — including Trump’s own election pollsters — to claim the election was stolen from Trump. He also ignored the fact that there was no reason to take the New York Post’s laptop story at face value because it’s a partisan pro-Trump rag, it provided no independent verification of the laptop at the time its story came out, which made it perfectly reasonable to question the story’s veracity and suspect that it was Russian disinformation. But the MRC demanded that the story never face questions despite the shady sourcing — something only die-hard partisans do — which made it look even more like it was in the bag for Trump.
Bonilla shouldn’t pretend there was no reason to question the story when it came out, even if it was ultimately proven accurate — a process that took many months. In his headline ranting that the laptop “WAS ALWAYS REAL,” Bonilla ignores that the New York Post originally made no effort to prove that it was, and expected people to take the word of a biased right-wing rag at face value.