Washington Post editorial board admits Hunter Biden story is a 'reckoning' for media

A Sunday editorial from the Washington Post editorial board called for a public reckoning over the media's handling over the Hunter Biden laptop story.

The editorial is titled "The Hunter Biden story is an opportunity for a reckoning," and discusses what the press should learn from the saga surrounding Hunter Biden's laptop. In particular, the article referenced why news outlets like themselves are now authenticating thousands of emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop when the emails were first reported in 2020. While the editorial board insisted that did not prove any corruption on the part of President Biden, this did raise several questions about the media.

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"For now, what’s more compelling than the assorted accusations about the Bidens’ behavior is this question: Why is confirmation of a story that first surfaced in the fall of 2020 emerging only now? When the New York Post published its blockbuster exclusive on the contents of a laptop said to have been abandoned at a Delaware repair shop by Hunter Biden, mainstream media organizations balked at running with the same narrative. Social media sites displayed even greater caution," the editorial board wrote.

During the 2020 presidential election, Twitter suspended the New York Post after they were the first to report on Hunter's emails. Prominent news outlets, including the Washington Post, either downplayed the news or accused it of being Russian disinformation.

However, the Post's editorial board insisted there was additional context behind media’s reluctance to cover the story, the publication admitted that it "doesn’t necessarily exonerate every action of every publication and platform."

"This series of events has prompted allegations of a coverup, or at best a double standard in the treatment of conservative and liberal politicians by mainstream media and social media sites," it wrote. 

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Journalist Glenn Greenwald, who previously slammed the Washington Post for its late coverage of Hunter Biden's laptop, complimented the publication for admitting problems with how this story was handled, albeit with several caveats.

"The Editorial is filled with self-justifying caveats about why it was reasonable to have gotten the story so wrong. It downplays the full extent of the joint CIA/media/Big Tech lie," Greenwald tweeted. "But at least the Post now stands alone in admitting the fraud and that an accounting is due."

He also added, "As welcome as it is, much of what's in the Post's Editorial is arrogant ad hoc rationalizing. They think a story is only confirmed once the NYT & WP say so - lol. The evidence of the archive's authenticity was overwhelming from the start. Many of us staked our careers on it."

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Although the Post did not offer solutions or retribution for reports on the Hunter Biden laptop, it did admit fault in suppressing an otherwise accurate and relevant story prior to the 2020 election.

"None of these dilemmas have easy answers. The lesson learned from 2016 was evidently to err on the side of setting aside questionable material in the heat of a political campaign. The lesson learned from 2020 may well be that there’s also a danger of suppressing accurate and relevant stories," the editorial board concluded.