As Hunter Biden’s trial on gun-related charges wound down, a June 11 post by Rich Noyes hammered the Media Research Center’s chief complaint throughout the trial, that non-right-wing media treated Hunter like a human being and not a right-wing punching bag:
A week after it began, the first of two criminal trials of President Biden’s son Hunter is now in the hands of the jury. A Media Research Center (MRC) analysis of ABC, CBS and NBC’s evening news coverage shows the broadcast networks have been far less interested in the felony trial of the Democratic President’s son than they were about the convoluted “hush money” case of Joe Biden’s GOP rival, Donald Trump, in New York City last month.
Trump is a former President, so some gap in coverage should be expected, as is the fact that there was no way for the broadcast networks to hide the criminal trial of any President’s son, nor for them to avoid the cringeworthy details of drug use at the center of the charges. But our analysis shows the networks have done their best to keep the coverage to a minimum, and to avoid any discussion of the more serious legal allegations surrounding Hunter’s business dealings.
And while TV coverage of Trump’s New York case often went out of its way to highlight the lurid and humiliating details, these networks have shown consistent sympathy towards an obviously dysfunctional First Family:
♦ While the networks deluged viewers with repeated references to Trump’s “criminal,” “felony” trial, nearly half of all references to Hunter’s case (47%) omitted those charged terms.
♦ ABC never mentioned, while CBS and NBC spent mere seconds, on the host of other legal issues surrounding the President’s son.
♦ The evening newscasts spent a grand total of just 40 seconds talking about Hunter’s laptop, and never acknowledged that they had falsely suggested the laptop was part of a “Russian disinformation campaign” four years ago.
♦ Viewers heard just 71 seconds of coverage of Joe Biden’s pledge not to pardon his son, and no suggestion from the networks that the President might change his mind after the election.
♦ While the coverage included a lot of negative information about Hunter’s drug use, reporters also exhibited sympathy for the President’s “only surviving son” and the “excruciatingly painful” testimony he was forced to hear.
Noyes also whined that non-right-wing media devoted “far less airtime” to Hunter’s trial than to Donald Trump’s New York trial — while, of course, deliberately refusing to examine how much time Fox News devoted to the trial and and comparing that to its Trump trial coverage, as well as the major difference that Hunter, unlike Trump, was never president and has never held elective office. Also note that despite being obsessed with describing the charges against Hunter as felonies, he never once uses that accurate descriptor for the charges Trump faced. He also didn’t explain why Trump paying hush money to a porn star to cover up their alleged affair should be treated as anything other than “lurid and humiliating” — even as he was gushing over the “cringeworthy details” of Hunter’s case.
Noyes’ whining about Hunter being treated as human continued:
Then on June 7, ABC’s Moran mourned: “For Hunter Biden, it was a day of deeply personal, anguishing testimony.”
Viewers heard no such concern for the feelings of President Trump or his family during his recent trial. The media’s kinder, gentler coverage of Hunter’s trial amounts to another election-year favor for Democrats, and it probably won’t be the last.
Noyes offered no evidence how the amoral adulterer (and, yes convicted felon) Trump earned or deserved any sort of “kinder, gentler coverage.”
When Hunter was found guilty later that day, Alex Christy whined that it was pointed out that it was pointed out that President Biden didn’t interfere with the case while Trump did everything he could to weasel out of accountability:
When the news came down on Tuesday that Hunter Biden had been found guilty of the gun-related charges against him, the cast of Jose Diaz-Balart Reports only did what comes naturally to MSNBC: hype his father as the “embodiment of the rule of law” and promote his re-election campaign.
Donald Trump did not fire legal analyst Andrew Weissmann or his boss, Robert Mueller, when he was president, but that did not stop him from oozing, “One, the son of the sitting president was pretty quickly tried. He was given due process and he was found guilty. And you have the current president, the father of the defendant, making it absolutely clear that he is not pardoning him, that he could have ordered at any time his Justice Department to get rid of this case, he did not do that.”
[…]Chief political analyst Chuck Todd also got in on the Biden 2024 promotion, “I think it is possible that there’s a contrast here that the public may see how Trump and his partisans handle the rule of law versus how Biden and how his partisans handle the rule of law and I’ll be honest, I am– this is one of those cases where I don’t think it’s brought if Biden is not president of the United States.”
Would Trump’s business records case have been brought if he wasn’t running? MSNBC wasn’t interested in finding out. Instead, Todd continued, “In some ways, we may look back on this and say he was held more accountable because of who he is, and not less accountable because of who he is, not less accountable because of who he is.”
Christy is ignoring that, unlike Hunter, Trump has loudly whined that he was not being treated as above the law.
Nicholas Fondacaro complained that one channel seemed to be encouraging President Biden to pardon his son — behavior Fondacaro would completely accept if it came form Trump:
For months, the liberal media have praised President Biden as a supposed pillar of the rule of law and touted his promise that he would accept any verdict in his son Hunter’s felony gun crime trial. But following the three guilty verdicts on Tuesday, ABC News seemed to prime their audience to expect him to intercede with the full powers of the presidency. The network also pouted about the court reading the verdict without First Lady Jill Biden in the room.
Following the verdict, ABC interrupted The View to mournfully deliver the heartbreaking and devastating news for the Biden family. Chief legal analyst Dan Abrams was the first to float the idea that Biden could use a slippery technique to help his son. Abrams pointed out that while Biden had promised not to “pardon” his son, commuting whatever sentence he received could still be on the table:
And, of course, Fondacaro groused that the Bidens were treated as human:
Of course, this was part of their sympathetic framing of the Biden family. “[The First Lady] took a whirlwind trip to France to join the president for the D-Day commemorations and came right back to be with her son,” senior national correspondent Terry Moran noted, falsely suggesting Hunter was her biological son.
Rubin also quibbled over one of the jurors allegedly smiled just before the verdict was read. “Again, something we have talked about before the jury not looking at Hunter Biden. One of the jurors actually took his seat smiling, which was quite striking to see him smiling right before that verdict was read,” she claimed, without evidence.
Fondacaro didn’t explain why he’s demanding that everyone viciously and irrationally hate Hunter and the rest of the Bidens the way he does.
Tim Graham grumbled that it was pointed out that, unlike the Bidens, Trump doesn’t really engender sympathy:
In the aftermath of the three Guilty verdicts for Hunter Biden on Tuesday morning, CNN sounded mournful about the news, and sounded like the only people worth discussing were Bidens, like they’re a sympathetic royal family like the Kennedys. There was an empathy overload. You could have gotten a little sloshed if you drank every time they touted how First Lady Jill Biden was in the front row of the courtroom nearly every day.
It only turned negative when they turned over the mic to CNN reporter Kristen Holmes, whose beat is the Trump campaign. She noted that the Trump campaign put out an early statement, then withdrew it quickly in favor of a Truth Social post from the former president.
Holmes claimed “many Americans” find the Biden family sympathetic, but that meanie Donald Trump doesn’t!
[…]A lot of the coverage was repetitive. Holmes repeated her patter in the next hour, because she insisted it was “really significant” spin: Trump has shown “little or no sympathy” for Hunter and Joe Biden, despite losing a brother to alcoholism. He hasn’t “shown any compassion” for the Biden family.
Graham didn’t dispute that Trump lacks sympathy — he’s just mad it was brought up. And it wouldn’t be a Hunter-related post if the laptop couldn’t be worked in there somewhere:
The most slavishly pro-Biden opinion is encouraged, while the conservative CNN analysts are rare. Scott Jennings wasn’t on the set right after the verdicts, but he tweeted something that would have curled Bedingfield’s hair: “The most important thing about the Hunter trial is the laptop was proven real. Joe Biden, his campaign, & dozens of Democratic luminaries & media outlets were willing to lie about it and/or censor it despite knowing it was real. The amount of credibility burned is staggering.”
Contrary to Jennings’ narrative, the reason the laptop was doubted at first is because — as we’ve pointed out — the New York Post failed to offer any independent corroboration for it when the story broke, and there was no reason to trust the story at face value, coming as it did from partisan Trump operatives working with a right-wing pro-Trump rag.