The media employ a double standard for accusations against presidents and presidential candidates that favors Joe Biden over President Trump, according to an analysis by RealClearInvestigations.
"A case can be made for adopting the Trump Standard or the Biden Standard, but it's hard to justify switching between the two in what can only be called a double standard," the report found.
"When the Christopher Steele 'dossier' was made public, the media reaction was to believe it – or at least to entertain it – unless and until it was disproven. Instead of demanding evidence to prove the claims, reporters said the allegations were just as yet 'unverified,'" the report said.
NPR called the dossier's claims "explosive."
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But "under the Biden Standard," RealClearInvestigations said, "it would have read that the dossier 'alleges without evidence.'"
Twitter news aggregator Twitchy cited Fox News commentator Brit Hume's take:
Unproven claims against Trump are simply described as “unverified.” Similar claims against Biden are said to be based on “no evidence.” https://t.co/guCxAIDZWR
— Brit Hume (@brithume) November 18, 2019
Twitter user Christopher King wrote, "It's a cliché now, without double standards the woke liberal media would have no standards at all."
RealClearInvestigations noted the years" of claims about President Trump and Russia from "journalism's most prestigious news outlets."
"No accusation, from secret meetings in Prague to tales of prostitutes peeing on beds, was deemed unfit to print. When they wanted to signal to readers that they were conveying claims instead of facts, their hedge words of choice – 'unverified' or 'not yet proved' were favorites – strongly suggested that confirmation was on the way," the report said.
Now, according to establishment media, accusations against Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, who "enjoyed a lucrative relationship with a Ukrainian gas company," are "without evidence."
RealClearInvestigations explained:
Journalists have been appropriately skittish about appearing to spread Trump talking points – especially his accusation that while serving as vice president Joe Biden demanded a Ukrainian prosecutor be fired because he was investigating the gas company, Burisma, that was paying his son Hunter tens of thousands of dollars a month.
Trump’s allegation has not been proved. But Joe Biden was the Obama administration’s point man on the Ukraine. His son has said Burisma probably hired him because of who his is father and Joe Biden did demand the prosecutor’s firing – because, he says, the prosecutor wasn’t doing enough to root out corruption. Still, the Burisma probe was dropped.
Normally media would greet such an arrangement skeptically, to say the least. A politician’s son making hay in a business over which his father has some sway? That’s the sort of stuff traditionally met with journalistic lectures not only on the evils of conflicts of interest but on the perils of the mere appearance of such conflicts. Instead, in this instance, reporters and editors have read from the same script to diminish and discredit such concerns.
The New York Times, RealClearInvestigations noted, pronounced in May, "No evidence has surfaced that the former vice president intentionally tried to help his son by pressing for the prosecutor general's dismissal."
Yet Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, admitted in her impeachment-hearing testimony last week that the State Department was concerned that Hunter Biden's deal was a conflict of interest. And she acknowledged she was coached on how to answer questions about Biden in her Senate confirmation hearing.