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Is media shielding Joe Biden from Hunter backlash? Full list of journalists named (and shamed) by Glenn Greenwald

Here's all about the explosive article titled 'The Real Scandal: US Media Uses Falsehoods To Defend Joe Biden From Hunter's Emails'

Glenn Greenwald — the winner of both, a George Polk Award and a Pulitzer Prize — has resigned from news outlet The Intercept. The explosive news sent shock waves across the country as the 53-year-old claimed the reason was that he was being silenced over an article on Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. The 77-year-old former Vice President's son Hunter Biden has been in choppy waters over an alleged laptop leak including a video on "sex and drugs".

Known for his coverage on the Edward Snowden archive in 2014 and the Intercept’s Brazil Archive over the last year showing corruption by high-level Bolsonaro officials, Greenwald claimed his article was heavily edited before being published and has now featured the original version on his own website.

In his bombshell article titled “The Real Scandal: US Media Uses Falsehoods To Defend Joe Biden From Hunter's Emails,” he begins by saying “Publication by the New York Post two weeks ago of emails from Hunter Biden's laptop, relating to Vice President Joe Biden's work in Ukraine, and subsequent articles from other outlets concerning the Biden family's pursuit of business opportunities in China provoked extraordinary efforts by a de facto union of media outlets, Silicon Valley giants and the intelligence community to suppress these stories.”

The article then goes on to name (and shame) a huge number of journalists, news organizations and other outlets who intentionally (or unintentionally) tried to subdue the reports — and in his own words — avoid the “feeling scorn and shunning in their own extremely pro-Democratic, anti-Trump circles.”

Here's the full list of people Greenwald mentioned in his long article: 

Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberly Strassel

The article reads: “Wall Street Journal's columnist Kimberly Strassel reviewed a stash of documents and 'found correspondence corroborates and expands on emails recently published by the New York Post,' including ones where Hunter was insisting that it was his connection to his father that was the greatest asset sought by the Chinese conglomerate with whom they were negotiating.” It further read: “Strassel noted that 'a May 2017 'expectations' document shows Hunter receiving 20% of the equity in the venture and holding another 10% for 'the big guy' — who Tony Bobulinski attests is Joe Biden.'”

Independent journalist Matt Taibbi

The Independent journalist Matt Taibbi published an article with ample documentation suggesting that Biden's attempt to replace a Ukrainian prosecutor in 2015 benefited Burisma. The article was titled “With the Hunter Biden Exposé, Suppression is a Bigger Scandal Than the Actual Story.” Greenwald mentions how Taibbi wrote, “The least curious people in the country right now appear to be the credentialed news media, a situation normally unique to tinpot authoritarian societies.”

In fact, Greenwald ends his article with Taibbi's words, quoting: “The whole point is that the press loses its way when it cares more about who benefits from information than whether it's true.”

New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman

Greenwald wrote: “The few mainstream journalists who tried merely to discuss these materials have been vilified. For the crime of simply noting it on Twitter that first day, New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman had her name trend all morning along with the derogatory nickname ‘MAGA Haberman’.” 

CBS News’ Bo Erickson

It then followed: “CBS News’ Bo Erickson was widely attacked even by his some in the media simply for asking Biden what his response to the story was. And Biden himself refused to answer, accusing Erickson of spreading a 'smear.'” 

NPR Public Editor

Greenwald pointed out how the NPR Public Editor — in an amazing statement — representative of much of the prevailing media mentality, explicitly justified NPR’s refusal to cover the story on the ground that “we do not want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories . . . [or] waste the readers’ and listeners’ time on stories that are just pure distractions.”

60 Minutes’ Leslie Stahl

Greenwald continued, “To justify her own show’s failure to cover the story, 60 Minutes’ Leslie Stahl resorted to an entirely different justification. 'It can’t be verified,' the CBS reporter claimed when confronted by President Trump in an interview about her program’s failure to cover the Hunter Biden documents. When Trump insisted there were multiple ways to verify the materials on the laptop, Stahl simply repeated the same phrase: 'It can’t be verified.'”

Later on, he also went on to say that the excuse the documents cannot be verified is “blatantly false for numerous reasons.”

Media reporter Brian Stelter

Greenwald noted how “the CNN panel mocked the story as too complex and obscure for anyone to follow — a self-fulfilling prophecy given that, as the network's media reporter Brian Stelter noted with pride, the story has barely been mentioned either on CNN or MSNBC.”

Quoting the New York Times, he wrote “most viewers of CNN and MSNBC would not have heard much about the unconfirmed Hunter Biden emails.... CNN’s mentions of “Hunter” peaked at 20 seconds and MSNBC’s at 24 seconds one-day last week.”

CNN's Christiane Amanpour

CNN's Christiane Amanpour barely pretended to be interested in any journalism surrounding the story, scoffing during an interview at requests from the RNC's Elizabeth Harrington to cover the story and verify the documents by telling her: 'We're not going to do your work for you.'

Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler 

The Greenwald article pointed out how Washington Post's Glenn Kessler wrote in what the organization calls a “fact-check” that  “Biden’s brief was to sweet-talk and jawbone Poroshenko into making reforms that Ukraine’s Western benefactors wanted to see as.” The story reads: “Kessler also endorsed the key defense of Biden: that the firing of Shokhin was bad for Burima, not good for it, quoting him, 'The United States viewed [Shokhin] as ineffective and beholden to Poroshenko and Ukraine’s corrupt oligarchs. In particular, Shokin had failed to pursue an investigation of the founder of Burisma, Mykola Zlochevsky.'”

Washington Post's Executive Editor Marty Baron

Greenwald highlighted how the Washington Post's Executive Editor Marty Baron issued a memo full of cautions about how Post reporters should, or should not, discuss hacked materials even if their authenticity is not in doubt, which outlined five “principles for covering potential hacked or leaked material ahead of the election.” 

Two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner David Barstow

Greenwald's article read: “When asked by NPR why they would report on documents when they do not know the source let alone the source's motives in providing them, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner David Barstow compellingly explained what had always been the core principle of journalism: namely, a journalist only cares about two questions — (1) are the documents authentic and (2) are they in the public interest? — but does not care about what motives a source has in providing the documents or how they were obtained when deciding whether to report them.”

In the end, Greenwald concluded: “The US media often laments that people have lost faith in its pronouncements, that they are increasingly viewed as untrustworthy and that many people view Fake News sites are more reliable than established news outlets. They are good at complaining about this, but very bad at asking whether any of their own conduct is responsible for it.”

Quoting his colleague Lee Fang, he wrote, “The partisan double standards in the media are mind-boggling this year, and much of the supposedly left independent media is just as cowardly and conformist as the mainstream corporate media. Everyone is reading the room and acting out of fear.”