Media outlets suppress stories for political reasons or for the interest of their owners, founders or leaders.
The latest story to be suppressed was the New York Post’s breaking coverage of the biggest political scandal in American history: the corruption of Joe Biden family.
Presidential candidate and former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden had been selling his influence to Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs and Chinese businessmen with connections to the Chinese Communist Party during his time in the Obama administration through the business activities of his son, Hunter Biden.
Twitter suppressed it by censoring accounts that shared the article. It locked the New York Post’s Twitter account until it agreed to delete the story (Twitter eventually gave in and unlocked it).
Right wing outlets—Fox News, Breitbart, Gateway Pundit and The Federalist—covered the scandal, but little to none of the left wing outlets covered it, even though there were text messages, 25,000 emails and key witnesses.
The gravity of the scandal is massive. One implication is that Biden is actually under the influence of China, making him a national security threat. If elected, he could not be trusted to serve the interests of the United States.
Dilbert creator and news commentator Scott Adams said the mainstream media have dismissed the story, disappearing the scandal from public. He called it “mind boggling” that “40 percent” of the public will never know about this very important piece information when they vote in the upcoming presidential election between Biden and Trump.
Suppressing important information for political or for the media owner’s interests is ,however, not new. A Bloomberg reporter once told me her colleagues have killed stories unfavorable to Chinese investors that were friends of Michael Bloomberg, their company’s owner.
It’s hard not to imagine this to be the case with Washington Post (owned by Jeff Bezos), New York Times (governed by Sulzberger family), Twitter (controlled by hedge fund man Paul Singer) and other out media outlets and platforms.
The tradition of information suppression dates back decades, when people only had their local newspaper for information. Researching American towns in the 1920s, sociologists Robert and Helen Lynd found: “For politically ambitious individuals or for political parties, … newspapers serve the purpose of shaping public opinion to their aims; this so-called politically partisan aspect of the press, which colors extensively the news allowed to reach the group, is emphasized by the fact that both dailies belong to the same political party.”
Newspapers that were explicitly for one party over another even withheld the names of the candidates running for office! They colluded with their political allies to manipulate voters into voting straight down the ticket.
Here’s what one Republican voter said:
I had planned to vote for [candidate name] for governor and one other for Democrat, but I couldn’t get the list to look over before, and it was long and they hurried me so that I just gave up trying to select my candidates and voted straight Republican. I guess it’s just as safe in the long run. You don’t know much about any of them and in dodging one man you don’t want, you are just as likely to pick another as bad if you only more about him.
Businessmen were safe from scrutiny. “It is generally recognized in [towns] that adverse news about prominent business class families is treated differently, even to the point of being suppressed entirely, than news about less prominent people,” the sociologists said.
The 1939 movie Mr. Smith Goes to Washington illustrates this. On the Senate floor, the protagonist advocates for a change to a bill that will help his state and cut out graft. The state’s political machine boss use his money and connections to keep this information out of the newspapers and instead promote lies about him.
For generations, Americans never knew how corrupt or incompetent a politician or local businessman was.
The difference now is that people have access to alternative sources of information through the internet. They can find out for themselves how corrupt someone is. After Trump brought up Biden’s corruption activities during the presidential debate, Google searches on the Biden crime family skyrocketed.
Subscribe to my weekly newsletter.