Hunter Biden's laptop, Catherine Herridge and trust in the media...
The TV veteran tells her story about trying to get the Hunter Biden laptop story on CBS News.
We all know it is happening, audiences for traditional broadcast news outlets are shrinking. Trust in the media is also falling with many believing media outlets don’t act in the public interest.
This is happening in Canada as well as the United States.
A big part of the reason trust is eroding is that too many in the mainstream media have decided they need to educate you, not inform you. Rather than telling you the facts and letting you make up your own mind, they want to make up your mind for you.
Sometimes, the gatekeepers in the MSM decide that you shouldn’t know certain information. If they information gets out, they attempt to discredit the stories or those telling them.
We saw that during COVID far too often, but that’s a story for another day.
The Hunter Biden laptop story was of real significance in the 2020 American presidential election and yet it was ignored, then discredited, they silenced in many online venues. At one point American security officials tried claiming it was all part of a Russian misinformation campaign to try and influence the election.
Now we know there was a real story there, how damaging to Biden is up for debate.
At the centre of that story for CBS News was Catherine Herridge.
Herridge is a Canadian, born and raised in Toronto, but has spent her career working for American media outlets like ABC, Fox News and CBS. If she were clearly a liberal or worked for liberal outlets, Herridge would be a household name in Canada and celebrated as a national treasure.
The fact that she’s a straight shooting reporter who worked for Fox News means Canada’s Big L Liberal establishment will never recognize her.
In a video released about a month ago in conjunction with LA Times Studios, Herridge talks about her attempts to get the Hunter Biden laptop story on CBS. She also reveals other behind the scenes problems with CBS during her time there while acknowledging that the company is now under new management.
And Herridge, who was fired from CBS in 2024 is her own independent journalist now.
This video hasn’t seen enough attention yet, so I’m sharing it with you here.
Everything is upside down - the media want to educate, educators want to inform.
Thank you Brian for the video - we watched it and have subscribed to her channel. This is what reporting of the 'news' ought to be. She names the position of an individual and then gives their name. That's a stamp of authenticity.
Thanks to you for bravery. Our nation has become a scary place to live in the last decade. Your willingness to report the actual news with your verified background information without vitriol is truly welcome.
I remember how horrified an American friend - who worked in media - was over the suppression of that laptop story. It was so blatant. But he had to see the corruption of big legacy media with his own eyes. No different here.
My point then and now was: They are not declining because they are corrupt. They are corrupt because they are declining.
The internet killed them. Anyone worth listening to can be an indie. In Canada, those who aren't worth listening to will depend increasingly on government for funds and and on its growing appetite for censorship for captive readers. In the States, legacies will be the toys of billionaires.
Incidentally, not many people know this but one factor in Harris-Walz's defeat was that the White House had tried dictating to Silicon Valley. And the Valley didn't like it. Key billionaires either switched sides or didn't help out like they used to.
One element was public for sure: Musk bought Twitter, a reliable regime product, and turned it into X. X is so much NOT a regime product that any number of legacy media scribes have flounced off to the BlueSky echo chamber, unnoticed and unmissed.
I'm glad Brian started a Substack. He's always worth a read. But if I subscribed to a legacy medium, I'd be paying for so much I don't need to know just to get his take on things. That approach to news dissemination worked for print and TV but is irrelevant to the internet.