Christiane Amanpour Gives The Game Away On Media Blackout Of Biden Scandal
Anyone who is still clinging to the notion that the mainstream press isn’t a wholly owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party needs to watch the exchange between premier journalist Christiane Amanpour and Republican National Committee spokeswoman Liz Harrington.
As the troubling Hunter Biden story has developed, the press’ reasons for not covering it shifted. At first, the media said they wouldn’t cover it because the veracity of the laptop and the smoking gun emails hadn’t been “verified” and speculated that it was all part of another Russian effort to get Trump elected.
After the authenticity of the laptop and at least some of the most damaging emails and texts were shown to be legitimate, and after the attempt to portray it as a Russian hoax was demolished, the press decided that it wasn’t a big enough scandal to warrant coverage, that it was just “a distraction.”
Asked about NPR’s lack of coverage of the scandal, for example, NPR Managing Editor for News Terence Samuel, said that “We don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions. And quite frankly, that’s where we ended up, this was … a politically driven event and we decided to treat it that way.”
(Websters should add this definition to “distraction” – n: in media parlance, a scandal that involves a Democratic politician.)
National Review had it almost right when it said in an editorial that “Too many journalists seem to live in terror of being blamed for reporting stories that might influence voters to reelect Donald Trump.”
Seem to live in terror? Why qualify it? There is no question that the press, which has done anything and everything to ruin Trump’s presidency, will do anything and everything it can to get him out of office, including burying a big scandal involving his opponent. Nor should there be any doubt that a mainstream journalist perceived to have helped Trump would see his or her career immediately canceled.
It was Amanpour, however, who revealed the deeper reason behind the media blackout of the Biden scandal, which goes beyond hatred of Trump.
Talking with Harrington, Amanpour, at her sneering best, tries to dismiss the laptop story by once again suggesting that it’s some sort of Russian ploy. The two go back and forth about that for a while.
Then, Amanpour says this: “As you know perfectly well, I’m a journalist and a reporter and I follow the facts. And there has never been any issues in terms of corruption,” referring to the Bidens. Here is what follows:
HARRINGTON: Wait, wait, wait!
AMANPOUR: The FBI —
HARRINGTON: How do you know that?
AMANPOUR: I’m talking about reporting and any evidence. I’m talking to you now —
HARRINGTON: I would love if you guys would start doing that digging and start doing that verification.
AMANPOUR: Now, we’re not going to do your work for you. I want to ask you a question —
HARRINGTON: That’s a journalist’s job!
AMANPOUR: —contrary to what —
HARRINGTON: It’s a journalist’s job to find out if this is verified!
Play close attention to Amanpour’s statement: “We’re not going to do your work for you.”
Whether she intended to or not, she managed to perfectly encapsulate the corrupt state of the Fourth Estate.
According to Amanpour, for the mainstream media to spend time investigating a Democrat for wrongdoing amounts to a violation of journalistic standards. It is “doing Republicans’ work for them.” She just admitted that she believes a journalist’s job is to do the Democrats’ bidding.
The fact that Amanpour felt comfortable saying this on the air — and that no journalist or news outlet has criticized her for doing so — shows just how deeply embedded this sentiment is among journalists.
Once you understand that, you will understand everything about how the press covers the news these days.
Comments are closed.
