There have been many laughable excuses for why the press should ignore allegations that Democratic nominee Joe Biden leveraged his position in the federal government to enrich his family, but none so laughable as the one offered recently by NBC News 4chan correspondent Ben Collins.
The press cannot cover the Biden allegations, which stem from the contents of a laptop that supposedly belonged to Biden’s son, Hunter, because the press is not in physical possession of said laptop, Collins argues.
“Reminder for your uncle,” the NBC staffer tweeted, “the press can’t cover ‘Hunter’s hard drive’ because … we don’t have access to it.”
Collins adds, referring to President Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who was given the laptop after it was reportedly abandoned in a repair shop, “This isn’t a Wikileaks thing. One guy has access to it, he wouldn’t give it to us, now he’s in quasi-hiding because he got caught in a hotel room with Borat’s daughter.”
NBC claims it contacted Giuliani for a copy of the hard drive and all relevant emails contained therein. Giuliani has yet to respond to the network’s request, NBC reports. Giuliani did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.
“This is a transparent election plot laundered through known bad actors, which is the point,” said Collins.
There is a lot to unpack here, from the non-sequitur about Giuliani’s brief, albeit humiliating, appearance in the new Borat film to the assertion that the emails, the authenticity of which the Biden campaign has not denied, are part of an “election plot.” But perhaps the most fascinating thing is Collins’s declaration that the press cannot cover a story unless they are in physical possession of all source material.
This is not an actual editorial standard. It is certainly not one that any major newsroom has operated under these past few years.
Recall that in 2017, the New York Times scored a supposed “scoop,” claiming in an exclusive that “Trump asked the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, to shut down the federal investigation into Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, in an Oval Office meeting in February.”
The entire report is based on “a memo Mr. Comey wrote shortly after the meeting.”
About that memo, the New York Times reports:
…
Mr. Comey shared the existence of the memo with senior F.B.I. officials and close associates. The New York Times has not viewed a copy of the memo, which is unclassified, but one of Mr. Comey’s associates read parts of it to a Times reporter.
What does this have to do with NBC? It is simple. NBC had absolutely zero problem following up on the New York Times’s reporting, even though neither newsroom had actually seen the supposed Comey memo.
“Comey Wrote Memo Saying Trump Urged Him to Drop Flynn Investigation: Sources,” NBC reported in a story that includes the line, “neither NBC News nor The Times has seen the memo. But The Times said an associate of Comey’s read parts of it to a reporter.”
More recently, after the Atlantic published an exclusive citing four anonymous sources who claim Trump once referred to dead U.S. servicemen as “losers” and “suckers,” NBC similarly had no problem repeating the allegation, even despite access to the Atlantic’s primary sources.
But that was then, and this is now. Now, newsrooms apparently cannot report on a given story unless they also have complete, unfettered access to all source material. Just ignore that efforts to impose and enforce this made-up editorial standard come in direct response to a story that reflects negatively on the Biden campaign.
Cute game!
