Mainstream media have failed to notice their own disinformation issue

… we in the mainstream have been so busy denouncing “fake news” that we failed to notice we’re developing a wee disinformation problem of our own — much of which has stemmed, ironically, from our efforts to fight disinformation on the right.

Case in point is a story that ran in the New York Post in October 2020. The newspaper/New York/ Post claimed to have been given access to a trove of Hunter Biden’s emails, from a laptop somewhat mysteriously abandoned at a Delaware repair shop. Among other things, those emails suggested Hunter Biden had possibly been trying to peddle his father’s influence during Joe Biden’s vice presidency.

An election was looming, and of course conservative media leaped on the “incriminating” trove. Here on Earth Prime, the information gatekeepers scrambled to keep this story from polluting the mainstream’s pristine infoscape, condemning the story as Russian disinformation, pure distraction, so dubious that even the New York Post’s own reporters were skeptical.

Twitter blocked the story, citing its policy barring “hacked materials,” then suspended the New York Post’s account for sharing it. Facebook allowed sharing but downranked the story in the news feed algorithms.

That’s a whole lot of effort to suppress a story that seems to be … true?

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