Recently, there has been much media attention on the topic of censorship. The major media have been reporting on Vladimir Putin’s efforts to keep the Russian people from hearing the truth about his war against Ukraine and what President Biden has called war crimes.
Dictionary.com has this definition of “a” Censure: “an official who examines books, plays, news reports, motion pictures, radio and television programs, letters, cablegrams, etc., for the purpose of suppressing parts deemed objectionable on moral, political, military, or other grounds.” That “official” can be a head of state, like Putin, the head of a news operation, or even an individual reporter. A censor is someone who decides to suppress or refuses to investigate a story because it doesn’t fit their worldview.
Which brings me to the Hunter Biden laptop story the “Discover” by The New York TimesAfter all, his laptop and the contents of it are genuine. The Times, other media outlets and social media ignored the story. In some instances the story was found to be fraudulent and it was blocked by several platforms.
I think the more accurate explanation as to why the story was censored by these entities is that it was broken by The New York Post, which the mainstream media deem a “conservative” newspaper and by their standard, unreliable. The line favored by much of the suppression press was that the laptop story was Russian “disinformation.”
The true disinformation purveyors (or none information) who are not reliable and have failed to fulfill their journalistic duties by investigating the story. It is possible that the suppression of information was deliberately done, as many conservatives suspect. NPR last year, “corrected an online article that falsely asserted that documents from first son Hunter Biden’s laptop had been “discredited by U.S. intelligence.” The correction came after the election. It was only until now that the Times and others had to finally admit their mistakes. The Times reported that NY Post51 intelligence officers, who claimed the laptop story had been fabricated by Russian disinformation in a public letter signed up to not apologise.
“Fact-checkers” published what they said were lies told by Donald Trump. The Washington Post Trump has lied about his office 30573 times. No such diligence has been conducted by the major media of Hunter Biden and his family’s alleged business and personal relationships with nefarious individuals and corrupt governments.
For years the legacy media has seen itself as the only “legitimate” source of news. In a type of “if a tree falls in the woods and no one is around, does it still make a sound?” scenario, if The New York Times, The Washington Post, broadcast and some cable news networks don’t report it, is it still news? Yes, it is and the source – whether it be The NY PostUK Daily Mail, or talk radio — should not matter so long as the story can be independently verified.
That The New York Times failed to do so until now is a dereliction of newspaper’s journalistic duty. If the information had been available before the election it could have affected votes in certain states, where Joe Biden won with narrow margins.
Times’ tardy tacit admission that NY Post was right will add to the view of many that today’s journalism is driven mostly by agendas and not facts and when information goes against the worldview of reporters and their bosses it is to be ignored.
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