Twitter users, including Conservatives and journalists, have quipped at a recent decision by the left-leaning US non-profit media outlet National Public Radio (NPR) to launch a “disinformation reporting team.”
The move was announced by NPR's Nancy Barnes, SVP of News and Editorial Director, and Terence Samuel, VP and Executive Editor, late last week.
“They are truly without shame,” the New York Post (NYP)’s Jon Levine tweeted, referring to NPR's dismissal of the Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020.
Levine, whose stand was supported by many netizens, recalled that at the time, NPR’s VP Samuel noted, in a reference to the Biden laptop story, that the news outlet’s staff don't want “to waste their time on stories that are not real stories,” and "don't want to waste the listeners' and readers' time on stories that are just pure distractions.”
Sean Davis, chief executive and co-founder of the right-leaning news outlet Federalist, argued that NPR's “entire organization is a disinformation team.”
He was echoed by Fox News contributor Mollie Hemingway, who tweeted that NPR has been “little other than a disinformation team for many years.”
Deputy Digital Director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee Mike Hahn urged the outlet to conduct an “internal review” first, while House Republican Lauren Boebert insisted that NPR’s first target “needs to be itself.”
Referring to NPR, one user tweeted that “purveyor of disinformation launches disinformation team”, with other netizen arguing that “disinformation is their whole model.”
The Hunter Biden Laptop Story
The contents of Hunter Biden's “laptop from Hell”, including compromising emails, naked photos and graphic videos, have been released since 2020, when the NYP was the first to reveal several of the emails from the device.
The trove of documents, which shed light on Hunter Biden’s shady business dealings in Ukraine and suggested that he may have peddled access to his father, then vice-president, are now being used in an ongoing Justice Department investigation of suspected tax fraud, money-laundering and foreign lobbying violations by the younger Biden, with some implicating the present POTUS, who has repeatedly denied the allegations.
The New York Times and a slate of other US mainstream media outlets, who initially suppressed the stories on the POTUS' son, finally acknowledged the authenticity of the emails in the cache on the Hunter Biden laptop’s drive.