In the last weeks before the 2020 election, the news media and the social media giants alike sought to squash, strangle and dissolve the New York Post stories about Hunter Biden's laptop and the secrets it contained.
There are two tracks of Biden's life to follow: the family-exploiting, buck-raking public life, and then the dissolute, drugs-and-strippers private life. Neither was considered fair game.
The same "accountability police" who rifled through the Trump family financial machinations had no interest in Biden's money-grubbing. The same tabloidish scoundrels who couldn't get enough interviews with porn star Stormy Daniels and her creepy lawyer Michael Avenatti pretended there was zero clickbait in Biden's sordid exploits.
When Biden came up, like during the impeachment in early 2020, "news" anchors such as CNN's John Berman gushed to Jill Biden: "You have called Hunter the heart and soul of the Biden family." And: "As a mother, how has it affected you?" He should have said "as a stepmother" on the "Facts First" network.
But then came that "aha" moment. Politico reporter Ben Schreckinger has a new book coming out simply titled "The Bidens." It promises to explain how, "Like the Kennedys before them, the Bidens are a tight-knit, idealistic Irish Catholic clan with good looks, dynastic ambitions, and serious personal problems."
Politico's "Playbook" newsletter proclaimed the new book by their reporter "finds evidence that some of the purported Hunter Biden laptop material is genuine, including two emails at the center of last October's controversy."
So now they report "a person who had independent access to Hunter Biden's emails" confirmed Hunter "received a 2015 email from a Ukrainian businessman thanking him for the chance to meet Joe Biden." He also confirmed a 2017 email containing a proposed breakdown of "a venture with Chinese energy executives," which included the line, "10 held by H for the big guy?" Everyone can guess Papa Joe is the "big guy."
On Oct. 23, businessman Tony Bobulinski held a press conference to discuss the Biden family business venture in China. The networks ignored him. On Oct. 27, he gave an hourlong interview to Fox News. The networks ignored him.
The "fact-checkers" doubled down on the media hostility. PolitiFact rained skepticism: "Credible news organizations have found no evidence to corroborate Bobulinski's claims about a role in the proposed venture for Joe Biden." That presumes the media had any desire to corroborate this story instead of ignore or "debunk" it.
The liberal media's position is clear. News about Democrat scandals isn't "confirmed" or "substantiated" until they decide it is. They have an exquisite sense of timing -- and delaying. Some of them now think it's "safe" to confirm Biden's emails at least to allow the selling of books.
Schreckinger's book promises to offer more reporting on the Biden family: on Joe's sister, Valerie; on his brothers, Jim and Frank, and we can guess his daughter Ashley and her husband, Howard Krein. There are a lot of business dealings and political fixings that the "news" people couldn't quite find in 2019 and 2020. Most Americans -- even newsreaders and watchers -- might not know President Joe Biden has siblings, or a son-in-law.
Maybe we should think of Billy Carter, or Roger Clinton... except, with the Biden brothers, Joe might be the most embarrassing one.
I can't put this the media performance better than National Review's David Harsanyi did: "It speaks poorly of the nation's political media that Americans have a better chance of learning what Joe Biden's favorite ice-cream flavor is than whether he knew about, or cashed in on, his son's corrupt adventures."
Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org.