Left-wing legacy media spun up a bogus talking point overnight to downplay new FBI documents alleging President Joe Biden’s involvement in shady business dealings.
Department of Justice (DOJ) whistleblowers provided Republican Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley with the FBI-1023 form that includes details on allegations that the Biden’s took bribes. The document contains allegations that Hunter Biden and Joe Biden were bribed by Mykola Zlochevsky, the Ukrainian oligarch who founded the energy firm Burisma.
Among the allegations laid forward, Zlochevsky allegedly told an FBI source it would take investigators more than a decade to find records of illicit payments to President Biden.
While being a journalist inherently means finding the truth (you know, verifying the information), outlets like CNN, The Hill and others decided to skip the hard work and go straight to downplaying the allegations.
Left-wing media couldn’t outright ignore the story, so they collectively decided to use the phrase “unverified claims” to cast doubt on the allegations.
A claim is by definition a statement made “typically without providing evidence or proof.” The inclusion of “unverified” throughout these headlines was needless, but if you’re a legacy media outlet with a history of shilling for those on the left, you’ll do just about anything to convince your audience that a potential damming allegation is just Republicans running amok again! (RELATED: ‘Doing Business With His Son’: ‘Fox & Friends’ Hosts React To Biden Bribery Document)
The Associated Press (of which The Washington Post simply reposted their story because why waste time covering bombshell allegations?) headlined their piece: “Grassley releases full FBI memo with unverified claims about Hunter Biden’s work in Ukraine.” CNN took a similar angle, “Grassley releases internal FBI document about unverified Biden bribery allegations,” Insider went with “FBI furious Grassley released doc with unverified claims about Biden’s,” The Hill had “Republicans release FBI form with unverified Biden-Burisma allegations” and ABC News drummed up perhaps the most frightening angle with “In rare move, Grassley releases unverified FBI source report alleging Biden involvement in bribe.”
New media talking point dropped
“unverified claims” pic.twitter.com/nHlIeI2BWn
— Geoffrey Ingersoll (@GPIngersoll) July 21, 2023
Their coverage of these “unverified claims” differs substantially from that of the Steele Dossier coverage, which while both “unverified” at the time and later flat out fake, was laid out to be very legitimate.
CNN reported on the alleged – and later proven fake –collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, writing “Schiff: New evidence shows possible Trump-Russia collusion.”
“The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee is claiming that he has been presented with new information on collusion between associates of President Donald Trump and Russia, suggesting ‘it’s the kind of evidence’ that a grand jury investigation would want to consider,” the report read.
Note how CNN didn’t say “claiming, without verification.”
Or take a November 2017 article entitled “Trump, Republicans try to flip the script on Russia collusion.”
They weren’t even trying to hide their bias at this point, leaving out the key word “allegations” from the headline and presenting the information as if it were fact. To make matters worse, CNN tried to cover for Hillary Clinton and the DNC’s scheming by saying Republicans launched an “attack” on Democrats and others after it was revealed Clinton and the DNC “helped fund an opposition research effort that produced a controversial dossier.”
It wasn’t “controversial.” It was fake.
Thankfully, CNN did note some of the allegations were “salacious and unverified” but if only they had the tenacity for accuracy then as they do now when reporting on “unverified claims.”
Of course, an extensive investigation found former President Donald Trump nor his associates conspired with Russia.
Insider published an article in 2017 in which the first paragraph says, “A flood of revelations over the past few months have raised new questions about President Donald Trump and his campaign’s connections to Russia.”
No “unverified claims of connections,” no “alleged connections,” just “connections” – connections may I remind you that never existed.
ABC News defended the Russia investigation after Trump criticized the “integrity” of the taxpayer-funded inquiry.
“President Donald Trump … [is] going after his critics and the integrity of the Russia investigation,” ABC News reported, making sure to note rather high in the story that the investigation “began in earnest” and that while the dossier “is uncorroborated” is is not “disproved.”