The Media Research Center seems to have mostly exhausted itself on the issue of Hunter Biden’s pardon, but it still continued to rage on other Hunter-related issues. P.J. Gladnick huffed in a Dec. 2 post:
The head of news at Politico, Alexander Burns, is upset over Joe Biden’s blanket pardon for his son Hunter. Forget Hunter’s crimes. Burns is irked is because the Biden pardon now makes it much more difficult to oppose President-Elect Donald Trump’s appointments on moral and legal grounds because of the sleazy pardon. A situation which Burns whined about in his story on Monday, “Joe Biden’s Parting Insult.”
Before you even get to the body of the text, the subtitle keys the reader in to what Burns finds to be his reason as to what really disturbs him about the pardon: “The president delivered a vote of no confidence in a justice system preparing for siege.”
[…]Burns then expresses his frustration that just at the moment there could have been an effective opposition to Trump’s appointees, Biden had to ruin everything with his pardon of son Hunter on Sunday night.
Tim Graham whined briefly in a Dec. 13 post:
On Thursday, President Biden commuted jail sentences for nearly 1,500 people and granted 39 pardons, marking the largest single-day act of clemency in modern history. So it was a little odd that ABC, CBS, and NBC all ignored Biden’s pardons and clemencies — unless they were trying not to remind people of the scandalous Hunter Biden pardon.
In his column the same day, Graham rehashed a bit of whining about the original coverage of Hunter’s laptop: “Lesley Stahl is infamous among Republicans for lecturing Trump in 2020 that you could not report on the Hunter Biden laptop because it could not be verified.” Graham offered no evidence that it was, in fact, verified at the time, or why it should embrace right-wing media ethics in reporting it.
Mark Finkelstein played Hunter whataboutism to try and save Matt Gaetz’s attorney general nomination in a Dec. 19 column:
Matt Gaetz’s past behavior isn’t role-model material.
By his own admission, Gaetz, in his 30s was “playing too hard….womanized, drank, and smoked more than I should have.”
But that doesn’t excuse CNN for its double standard on the subject.
At the end of a segment on today’s CNN This Morning regarding the House Ethics Committee’s impending release of its report on its investigation of Gaetz, host Kasie Hunt, speaking of Gaetz’s activities, dubiously wondered, “in his 30s?” Hunt was apparently suggesting that the 30s are too old to still be a hard partier.
Annie Linskey of the Wall Street Journal agreed, saying, “I know. Maybe in your 20s.”
Not so surprisingly, CNN never mentioned two other men who were still partying hard at an advanced age.
By his own admission, Hunter Biden didn’t get sober until 2019–when he was 49.
Finkelstein failed to mention the fact that unlike Gaetz, Hunter was not trying to be attorney general.
Rich Noyes tried to hype an irrelevant last-minute scandal in a Dec. 28 post:
The cover of this morning’s New York Post (Saturday, December 28) screams the news about “the pictures Joe Biden didn’t want you to see — helping Hunter make millions with private introduction to Xi.”
Post reporter Steven Nelson summarized: “The National Archives has finally released photos showing then-Vice President Biden meeting with two of first son Hunter Biden’s Chinese government-linked business partners — again proving that the President lied about not interacting with his family’s foreign patrons….”
Nelson’s first of two articles about the newly-released photos was stamped 12:45pm ET on Friday afternoon, yet none of the Big Three evening or morning broadcasts subsequently mentioned the damning new proof of Joe Biden’s participation in his son’s business dealings. Last night, ABC’s World News Tonight and NBC Nightly News led their broadcasts with winter weather, while the CBS Evening News began with the passing of CBS Sports broadcaster Greg Gumbel.
This morning, ABC’s Good Morning America, CBS Saturday Morning and NBC’s Today provided a combined five and a half hours of news programming — but chose not to utter a peep about the new Biden scandal headlines.
Noyes didn’t explain why anyone outside of his Biden-obsessed right-wing bubble should share his obsession with trying to personally destroy Hunter. Instead, he just offers whataboutism: “If a liberal foundation had uncovered photographic evidence bolstering longstanding suspicions of corruption by any member of the Trump family (or any other prominent Republican, for that matter), do you think the broadcast networks would have taken a complete and total pass on it? Didn’t think so.” Noyes omitted the fact that the America First Legal Foundation, which released the photos, is not a real “foundation” but, rather, a right-wing lawfare group.
Jorge Bonilla did another coverage count in a Jan. 14 post:
You can expect that the network newscasts will accord significant time to covering Special Counsel Jack Smith’s report on the January 6th prosecution of then-Former President Donald Trump. But that simply wasn’t the case when it came to covering the Special Counsel report on Hunter Biden.
[…]Part of what is different is that ABC delivered an almost clinical report on the Special Counsel’s report, and chronicled the exchanges between Weiss and President Joe Biden. What you don’thear, however, is caterwauling about how Joe Biden’s attacks on the Department of Justice represent an attack against our democratic institutions. A father’s love can’t be anti-democratic, can it?
Such as it is, this ABC report was the lone entry on l’affaire Hunter Biden. CBS and NBC could not be bothered to muster a report. Again, one can reasonably expect that the Smith report will garner significant airtime, and closer to the top of the A-block. As they say: that’s (D)ifferent.
The next day, Graham contributed a coverage comparison:
On Monday, the special counsel who prosecuted Hunter Biden, David Weiss, issued a final report with blistering criticism of President Biden for suggesting he was politically motivated. In the early hours of Tuesday, the special counsel who prosecuted Donald Trump, Jack Smith, issued a partial final report. It’s a perfect exhibit for a media-bias contrast….and it was.
Jorge Bonilla pointed out on Monday night that CBS and NBC skipped over Weiss entirely, while ABC gave it 19 seconds. Two networks offered a Jack Smith preview: ABC (1:26) and CBS (19 seconds).
But on Tuesday morning, the ABC, CBS, and NBC morning shows gave eight minutes and 14 seconds to Jack Smith’s report on Trump, and ABC threw in 27 more seconds on Weiss.
ABC’s Good Morning America devoted two minutes and 28 seconds to Smith, more than CBS Mornings (2:16) and less than NBC’s Today (3:30).
Naturally, ABC’s report was helmed by former top Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos, while NBC turned to legal analyst (and weekend anchor) Laura Jarrett, who is the daughter of top Obama aide Valerie Jarrett. At least at the end, co-host Savannah Guthrie noted “It is interesting because Jack Smith revealed why he didn’t charge Donald Trump with something more serious, such as insurrection or inciting the riot.” Jarrett replied, “He didn’t think he could prove it.”
Then on Tuesday night, the networks all aired Jack Smith stories again, for a combined five minutes and 57 seconds. ABC (1:54), CBS (2:22), and NBC (1:41) alternated between Smith hot takes and Trump hot takes. Trump called Smith “deranged,” and Smith boasted he would have convicted Trump of crimes. Yeah, if it hadn’t been for those meddling voters.
Add all that up, and Jack Smith drew almost 17 minutes (16:56) over the two evening and one morning cycles on ABC, CBS, and NBC, while Weiss had 46 seconds. That’s about 22 to 1.
Note that Graham hyped the Weiss report as having “blistering criticism of President Biden for suggesting he was politically motivated,” while Smith’s report is described only as a “partial final report” — in which Smith wrote (unmentioned by Graham) that “To all who know me well, the claim from Mr. Trump that my decisions as a prosecutor were influenced or directed by the Biden administration or other political actors is, in a word, laughable.” Smith added that “but for Mr. Trump’s election and imminent return to the Presidency, the Office assessed that the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial.”
Strange how Graham doesn’t want his readers to know this crucial information about our new president yet can’t stop whining about the son of the old one who never held political office.