Hunter Biden pardon: Media takes latest blow to credibility with botched coverage of broken promise

Liberal and legacy media outlets were left reeling on Sunday after President Biden broke his repeated promise not to pardon his son Hunter, in yet another chapter of the media's faulty coverage of the ongoing Biden family saga.

A years-long scandal that involved big tech, the intelligence community and many of these same media outlets kicked off when Hunter Biden’s scandalous laptop was falsely dismissed as Russian disinformation weeks before the 2020 election. More than four years later, the media continued to mishandle the Biden family controversy by taking the president’s claim that he wouldn’t pardon his son as gospel.

All of this occurred as the media insisted Biden was sharp as a tack until his infamous debate debacle on live television forced them to pivot away from the notion that he was fit to serve another term. A longtime media insider, who has served in senior roles at multiple prominent newsrooms, said "the media has disgraced itself" over the past five years. 

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"First, they willfully ignored clear evidence of criminal misconduct by Hunter… acquiesced to by Joe, which they called ‘disinformation.’ Then they willfully ignored clear evidence of the president’s senility, and the conspiracy by Hunter, Jill and Valerie to keep him and, by extension, them in power. This is media corruption pure and simple, and there needs to be a reckoning," the media veteran told Fox News Digital. 

The infamous laptop filled with shocking videos and photos of drug use, lewd sex acts, and sensitive business communications was unearthed by the New York Post a few weeks before then-candidate Joe Biden was set to square off against then-President Trump. But, in an unprecedented act of uniformed censorship, the bombshell was essentially buried.

Twitter, claiming the story violated its terms of service on hacked materials, locked the New York Post out of its account for weeks and even blocked users from sharing the story link. 

MSNBC, CNN, CBS, NPR, The Washington Post, The New York Times and a variety of other outlets and social media platforms either pushed the since-debunked "Russian disinformation" narrative or ignored the story altogether. The Russian disinformation narrative, which stemmed in part from an open letter penned by 51 former intel officials that was quickly parroted by legacy media outlets, was proven to be bogus once President Biden was safely in office. 

But Hunter Biden, 54, continued to cause headaches throughout his father’s administration. The first son was convicted in two separate federal cases earlier this year — he was first found guilty in June on three felony charges for federal gun violations and pled guilty in September in a separate felony tax case.

Throughout the year, President Biden made many statements claiming he would not pardon his son. Much like the false claim the laptop was "Russian disinformation," the president’s declaration was swiftly echoed by the press. 

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Biden’s promise was billed as "presidential," "stoic," "a moment of moral clarity" and an example of respect for the law. MSNBC host and former White House press secretary Jen Psaki claimed that Biden would not pardon his son because he believed in the American justice system. 

"The justice system that convicted his only surviving son is the same justice system that he’s vowed to protect," Psaki told viewers. 

MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle gushed over Biden’s promise that he wouldn’t pardon his son, MSNBC’s Alex Wagner suggested Biden’s promise indicated that Republicans wouldn’t be able to suggest Democrats have "rigged" the system and author Evan Osnos appeared on CNN to boast that Biden wouldn’t use the "tempting" pardon power.

CNN’s Laura Coates told viewers the president was putting the "law before family," and talking heads on both MSNBC and CNN praised Biden for declaring "nobody is above the law." 

Of course, all of the journalists who celebrated Biden’s past promises not to pardon his son have egg on their faces now that he did an about-face. The White House announced Sunday that Hunter Biden would be pardoned for all offenses against the U.S. the first son "has committed or may have committed" from Jan. 1, 2014 to Dec. 1, 2024.

Biden also caused headaches among media members with his poor performance during a June debate against then-candidate Donald Trump. After years of insisting Biden had the mental acuity to serve another term, calls for him to step aside began as soon as the debate concluded, as Democratic allies were stunned when he appeared confused, unsure and raspy. 

Since the pardon news broke on Sunday night, Biden's backers in the media have pivoted between criticizing his broken promise and defending him for not subjecting his son to the wrath of the incoming Trump administration's Justice Department.

Semafor’s Ben Smith asked Axios political correspondent Alex Thompson if he feels the media has missed the story of Biden’s family. 

"Many reporters were wary of touching the family stuff… and they missed a central drama of the Biden presidency which doubled as a family tragedy and a love story," Thompson said in a text message published by Smith. 

"Yes, there were a lot of bad-faith conservatives trying to humiliate rather than illuminate," Thompson continued. "But Biden’s grief of Beau and guilt over Hunter haunted Biden the past four years." 

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A second well-connected media insider believes it’s fair to say the Biden family drama has been a blind spot in newsrooms.

"Is it talked about in newsrooms? It should be. I mean, I have talked to a lot of people along the way about why aren't we doing a more substantial and fair job. It doesn't mean that some of the Republican zealotry about Hunter wasn't misplaced," the media insider told Fox News Digital. 

"I've always seen it as an unbelievable blind spot of the Democratic Party and of the Biden family themselves, that not understanding what a litmus test Hunter Biden was going to become for whether or not the legal system was fair or not," the insider continued.  "And there's just no way to look at some of Hunter's transgressions and not say, ‘Hey, these things are going to come up.’"

Media and communications expert Tobe Berkovitz, a Professor Emeritus at Boston University, doesn’t feel the saga surrounding botched coverage of Hunter Biden completely ruined the media’s credibility in the eyes of the average American – but it certainly didn’t help. 

"The media is just eating such crow. That's the biggest problem, because you have one reporter, one analyst after another, saying how wonderful Biden is and following the rule of law. And he's not going to pardon Hunter and let's take that off the table... now all of a sudden, all of them look like fools," Berkovitz told Fox News Digital. 

Fox News Digital’s Landon Mion, Emma Colton, Jeffrey Clark and Joseph A. Wulfsohn contributed to this report.