News ArticlesExcerpts of Key News Articles in Major Media
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A Canadian billionaire is facing allegations he sexually abused more than five dozen women when they were children – with the victims alleging they were recruited and paid to participate in his chilling sex ring. Robert Miller, the founder of Future Electronics, is accused of repeatedly giving underage girls money and gifts in exchange for sex between 1994 and 2016. The alleged abuse happened in hotels throughout Montreal. Miller was ordered on Friday to fork over two of his million-dollar Montreal homes as part of a lawsuit filed by four of his accusers. The women accused the alleged predator of recruiting them as high school students to have sex in exchange for money, describing his prostitution scheme as a "planned system of sexual exploitation" of girls and teens, according to court documents. One victim alleged she had sex with Miller more than 30 times over two years starting in 1999 when she was 14 years old. On one occasion, she was given $1,000 to have sex with Miller – who allegedly refused to wear a condom due to a latex allergy – at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel. The victim said the alleged sexual abuse left her suicidal as she struggled with alcohol and drugs. Miller, who has denied the allegations, is also facing a separate proposed lawsuit by more than 50 women who reported that he gave them money and gifts in exchange for sex between 1996 and 2006, CBC reported. He was also arrested in May on sexual abuse and exploitation charges involving 10 victims.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on sexual abuse scandals.
Left on their own, some deforested areas can rebound surprisingly fast with minimal help from humans, sequestering loads of atmospheric carbon as they grow. New research from an international team of scientists, recently published in the journal Nature, finds that 830,000 square miles of deforested land in humid tropical regions–an area larger than Mexico–could regrow naturally if left on its own. Five countries–Brazil, China, Colombia, Indonesia, and Mexico–account for 52 percent of the estimated potential regrowth. That would boost biodiversity, improve water quality and availability, and suck up 23.4 gigatons of carbon over the next three decades. "A rainforest can spring up in one to three years," said Matthew Fagan, a conservation scientist and ... coauthor of the paper. "In five years, you can have a completely closed canopy that's 20 feet high. I have walked in rainforests 80 feet high that are 10 to 15 years old. It just blows your mind." That sort of regrowth isn't a given, though. First of all, humans would have to stop using the land for intensive agriculture–think big yields thanks to fertilizers and other chemicals–or raising hoards of cattle, the sheer weight of which compacts the soil and makes it hard for new plants to take root. A global goal known as the Bonn Challenge aims to restore 1.3 million square miles of degraded and deforested land by 2030. More than 70 governments and organizations from 60 countries ... have signed on.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this about healing the Earth.
About 468 million children ... live in areas affected by armed conflict. Verified attacks on children have tripled since 2010. Last year, global conflicts killed three times as many children as in 2022. "Killings and injuries of civilians have become a daily occurrence," U.N. human rights chief Volker TĂĽrk commented in June when he announced the 2023 figures. "Children shot at. Hospitals bombed. Heavy artillery launched on entire communities." In 2005, [the United Nations Security Council] identified – and condemned – six grave violations against children in times of war: killing or maiming; recruitment into or use by armed forces and armed groups; attacks on schools or hospitals; rape or other grave acts of sexual violence; abduction; and the denial of humanitarian access to them. Between 2005 and 2023, more than 347,000 grave violations against youngsters were verified across more than 30 conflict zones in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America, according to UNICEF. Israa Al-Qahwaji, a mental health and psychosocial support coordinator for Save the Children in Gaza, shared the story of a young boy who survived an airstrike. In one therapy session, he was asked to mold something out of clay to represent a wish. With his remaining hand, he carefully shaped a house. After finishing the exercise, he turned to the counselor with a question that left Al-Qahwaji emotionally overwhelmed. "Now," the boy asked, "will you bring my dad and give me my hand back?"
Note: Learn more about human rights abuses during wartime in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war from reliable major media sources.
RTX Corporation, the weapons giant formerly (and better) known as Raytheon, agreed on Wednesday to pay almost $1 billion to resolve allegations that it defrauded the U.S. government and paid bribes to secure business with Qatar. RTX, as part of this agreement that spanned multiple investigations into its business, admitted to engaging in two separate schemes to defraud the Defense Department, which included deals for a radar system and Patriot missile systems. "The Raytheon allegations are stunning, even by the lax standards of the arms industry," [said William Hartung with the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft]. "Engaging in illegal conduct on this scale suggests that, far from being an aberration, this behavior may be business as usual for the company." Raytheon has been ... embroiled in scandals and malfeasance for decades. The company pleaded guilty to "illegally trafficking in secret military budget reports" (1990); paid $4 million to settle charges that it overbilled the Pentagon (1994); paid $10 million to settle a class-action lawsuit contending that its Amana unit sold defective furnaces and water heaters (1997); paid $2.7 million to settle allegations that it improperly charged the Pentagon for expenses incurred in marketing products to foreign governments (1998); [and] agreed to pay a $25 million civil penalty to resolve State Department charges that the company violated export controls (2003).
Note: Learn more about unaccountable military spending in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.
TD Bank will pay $3 billion to settle charges that it failed to properly monitor money laundering by drug cartels. The fine includes a $1.3 billion penalty that will be paid to the US Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a record fine for a bank. TD also intends to pay $1.8 billion to the US Justice Department and plead guilty to resolve the US government's investigation that the bank violated of the Bank Secrecy Act and allowed money laundering. More than 90% of transactions went unmonitored between January 2018 to April 2024, which "enabled three money laundering networks to collectively transfer more than $670 million through TD Bank accounts," according to a legal filing. In one instance, TD Bank employees collected more than $57,000 worth of gift cards to process more than $470 million in cash deposits from a money laundering network to "ensure employees would continue to process their transactions" and not declare them in required reports, the DoJ said. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), a US agency that regulates banks, said TD processed hundreds of millions of dollars of transactions the clearly indicated highly suspicious activity. The Canadian bank will be subject to four years of monitoring [to] ensure it is following the agreement. The US Federal Reserve also fined TD Bank and will force the company to relocate to the United States its anti-money laundering compliance office.
Note: Several years ago, Europe's biggest bank was caught laundering millions for cartels and terrorists. For more, read our latest Substack on the dark truth behind the war on drugs.
U.S. private equity firms have bought up producers and distributors of a chemical compound known to cause brain damage, cancer and other illnesses. Blackstone and American Securities LLC, which control assets worth billions of dollars, have in recent years acquired operations in Canada and elsewhere that sell lead chromate, a toxic powder used in paint, on roads and machinery, and even in food. Studies have shown declines in safety practices following private equity investment, including more workplace accidents and deaths. Health experts and others focused on corporate accountability say private equity's expansion into the lead chromate industry is concerning. "These firms set up structures for ownership to have zero legal responsibility for what happens at that company," said Justin Flores, campaign director at the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, a U.S. nonprofit research and advocacy organization. Lead chromate in paint covers parking lots, children's playgrounds, and hospitals from Mexico to Greece, studies show, raising concerns over what happens when the pigment breaks down, leaching lead into dust, soil and water runoff. Earlier this year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration confirmed that lead chromate was found in cinnamon applesauce pouches that sickened hundreds of children. The tainted applesauce sailed through loopholes and food safety systems around the world.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on financial system corruption and toxic chemicals from reliable major media sources.
In Sudan ... civilians have endured 16 months of a violent civil war. Last week, talks to end the war began in Switzerland, but only one of the two warring factions showed up. By the weekend, however, each side had taken a critical step. The armed group attending the talks agreed to enable the delivery of emergency aid to parts of the East African country where hundreds of thousands of people are at risk of starvation. About the same time, and seemingly independently, the other faction opened a vital border crossing for the same purpose. The mutual acknowledgment of the need to protect innocent life may have opened a door to solving one of the world's gravest crises. "These constructive decisions by both parties will enable the entry of aid needed to stop the famine, address food insecurity and respond to immense humanitarian needs," international mediators in Geneva said in a joint statement. Recent trends in conflict resolution, the International Committee of the Red Cross noted, have shown that protecting innocent civilians from harm "can have an impact on the success of peace negotiations and agreements, as well as on the chances for post-conflict reconciliation." Humanitarian gestures, the ICRC observed, helped the Colombian government build trust with guerrilla factions and strengthen compliance with a 2016 peace accord. More recently, two armed groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo signed a mutual pledge in March to respect and protect civilians caught in the vast African country's fragmented wars.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this about healing the war machine.
The 43,000 tons of radioactive waste and soil came from a top-secret initiative: The Manhattan Project, which built the atomic bombs America dropped on Japan in 1945. In 1973, that waste ended up in an unlined landfill in Bridgeton, Missouri, a St. Louis suburb. Workers spread it to cover trash and construction debris. In 1990, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency declared the West Lake Landfill one of the nation's most contaminated sites requiring cleanup. [In 2012], residents mobilized, spotlighting stories of children dying from cancer. And they pressed waste-management giant Republic Services, the dump's owner, to remove the radioactive waste. In refuting neighbors' complaints, Republic tapped an unlikely ally that U.S. corporations have leaned on for decades: a federal health agency set up to protect people from environmental hazards just like the West Lake dump. A 2015 report by that small bureaucracy, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) ... declared that the landfill posed no health risk to the community. Deborah Mitchell grew up ... less than a mile from the dump. She lost both parents to cancer and battled the disease herself. Dozens of neighbors have similar stories. Three cancer researchers told Reuters the number of cases in the neighborhood is worrisome. "You just feel like you're being gaslighted by your own government," Mitchell said of the ATSDR's role.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and toxic chemicals from reliable major media sources.
It is often said that autonomous weapons could help minimize the needless horrors of war. Their vision algorithms could be better than humans at distinguishing a schoolhouse from a weapons depot. Some ethicists have long argued that robots could even be hardwired to follow the laws of war with mathematical consistency. And yet for machines to translate these virtues into the effective protection of civilians in war zones, they must also possess a key ability: They need to be able to say no. Human control sits at the heart of governments' pitch for responsible military AI. Giving machines the power to refuse orders would cut against that principle. Meanwhile, the same shortcomings that hinder AI's capacity to faithfully execute a human's orders could cause them to err when rejecting an order. Militaries will therefore need to either demonstrate that it's possible to build ethical, responsible autonomous weapons that don't say no, or show that they can engineer a safe and reliable right-to-refuse that's compatible with the principle of always keeping a human "in the loop." If they can't do one or the other ... their promises of ethical and yet controllable killer robots should be treated with caution. The killer robots that countries are likely to use will only ever be as ethical as their imperfect human commanders. They would only promise a cleaner mode of warfare if those using them seek to hold themselves to a higher standard.
Note: Learn more about emerging warfare technology in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on AI and military corruption.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has won a $1.4 billion settlement from Facebook parent Meta over charges that it captured users' facial and biometric data without properly informing them it was doing so. Paxton said that starting in 2011, Meta, then known as Facebook, rolled out a "tag" feature that involved software that learned how to recognize and sort faces in photos. In doing so, it automatically turned on the feature without explaining how it worked, Paxton said – something that violated a 2009 state statute governing the use of biometric data, as well as running afoul of the state's deceptive trade practices act. "Unbeknownst to most Texans, for more than a decade Meta ran facial recognition software on virtually every face contained in the photographs uploaded to Facebook, capturing records of the facial geometry of the people depicted," he said in a statement. As part of the settlement, Meta did not admit to wrongdoing. Facebook discontinued how it had previously used face-recognition technology in 2021, in the process deleting the face-scan data of more than one billion users. The settlement amount, which Paxton said is the largest ever obtained by a single state against a business, will be paid out over five years. "This historic settlement demonstrates our commitment to standing up to the world's biggest technology companies and holding them accountable for breaking the law and violating Texans' privacy rights," Paxton said.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Big Tech and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.
What if your entire economy was based on one product? For all intents and purposes, Denmark quite literally runs on Ozempic, a diabetes medication that is now widely used by consumers to lose weight. Worldwide sales have increased by over 60% in the past year alone. In the United States, which is one of its largest markets, prescriptions for Ozempic and similar drugs quadrupled between 2020 and 2022. At the end of 2023, Novo became the largest company in Europe. And its rise has eclipsed the Danish economy, creating a lot of value on the one hand, but an imbalanced economy on the other. You might have heard of "petrostates," countries where fossil fuel extraction dominates the economy. By that measure, you might call Denmark a pharmastate, because Novo now dominates the Danish economy. Nearly 1 out of every 5 Danish jobs created last year was at Novo. And that's just directly. If you also include the jobs that Novo has created indirectly – like, for example, at its suppliers, or from all the newly wealthy Novo employees spending their money at shops and restaurants – nearly half of all private-sector nonfarm jobs created in Denmark can be traced back to Novo. Novo Nordisk's meteoric trajectory raises a question about economic growth that's much bigger than just Denmark: Namely, what are the risks of having one giant company driving your entire economy? And crucially, what happens if that company's fortunes take a turn for the worse?
Note: The makers of these weight-loss drugs could be hit with over 10,000 lawsuits over severe adverse events from these drugs. It is now estimated that 1 in 8 adults in the US have taken Ozempic or another weight-loss drug. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Big Pharma profiteering from reliable major media sources.
Ryan Graves was in the Navy for more than 10 years. He's since left the service. This summer, he testified before the House Subcommittee on National Security, the Border and Foreign Affairs. And he told the representatives that as a pilot and a formally trained engineer, he'd witnessed many phenomena that he could not explain. "During a training mission in Warning Area Whiskey 72, 10 miles off the coast of Virginia Beach, two F-18 Super Hornets were split by a UAP," [said Graves]. "The object, described as a dark gray or black cube inside of a clear sphere, came within 50 feet of the lead aircraft and was estimated to be 5 to 15 feet in diameter. The mission commander terminated the flight immediately and returned to base. Our squadron submitted a safety report, but there was no official acknowledgement of the incident and no further mechanism to report the sightings. Soon, these encounters became so frequent that aircrew would discuss the risk of UAP as part of their regular preflight briefs." Graves now runs an organization called Americans for Safe Aerospace. It's a non-profit dedicated to understanding unidentified anomalous phenomena as a national security threat. He says he still doesn't know what he saw in the skies. Part of the reason for that is that any unidentified aerial phenomenon, as the government now calls them, is automatically highly classified. But he says, whatever they are, they must be taken seriously.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our UFO Information Center.
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence submitted its 6,700-page "torture report" about the CIA to the White House in April 2014. More than 10 years later, the full report remains secret after a federal appellate court dismissed a lawsuit I filed in the hopes of forcing its release. The document "includes comprehensive and excruciating detail" about the CIA's "program of indefinite secret detention and the use of brutal interrogation techniques," the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who chaired the Senate intelligence committee at the time, wrote in a 2014 summary. "The full report details how the CIA lied to the public, the Congress, the president, and to itself about the information produced by the torture program," said Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University. So far, efforts to obtain the torture report using the federal Freedom of Information Act have been unsuccessful. In late 2016, despite the CIA director's objections, former President Barack Obama placed a copy in his presidential papers. But that copy is not subject to FOIA until 2029 – 12 years after Obama left office. The CIA and a handful of federal agencies also have copies of the torture report, although the Trump administration returned several of these to the Senate intelligence committee vaults in 2017. The Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations all fought strenuously against FOIA requests for these agencies' copies.
Note: The above was written by media law attorney Shawn Musgrave. No one been charged in connection with the unethical CIA torture program. Many of the architects and enablers of the program are now in powerful and esteemed positions in academia, high levels of government, the federal judiciary, and more. For more, read the "10 Craziest Things in the Senate Report on Torture" and check out our summary on US torture programs in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center.
"I can do things by myself more instead of having my dad or my mom do them," says Deven Doutis. Deven's teacher, Amy Wolfe, sensed students were entering higher grades with more needs than in past years. Some couldn't open a water bottle, for instance, or navigate minor conflicts with their peers. So when Ms. Wolfe heard about a program called Let Grow, she decided to pilot it within select classrooms. The program's premise is simple: When children gain independence, they grow into more confident and capable people. In a commentary piece published by The Journal of Pediatrics last year, researchers pointed to evidence showing a correlation between children's dwindling independence and increasing mental health problems over several decades. "We are not suggesting that a decline in opportunities for independent activity is the sole cause of the decline in young people's mental well-being over decades, only that it is a cause, possibly a major cause," the authors wrote. In Ms. Wolfe's classroom each month, students chose an independent activity, loosely tied to a theme, and completed it by themselves. Then they reported back to their classmates and teacher about the experience. There were no grades or critiques. If Ms. Wolfe asked any probing questions, it was to suss out how her students felt after, say, baking a cake or pulling weeds. Her hope is that their newfound confidence carries into the academic realm.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this about reimagining education.
Hunter Biden was hit with a double whammy Wednesday. First, a new filing by the prosecution in his upcoming gun-felony trial in Delaware poured scorn on Hunter's legal team's bizarrely persistent denial that his laptop and its contents are authentic. Then IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joe Ziegler delivered 100 pages of new bombshell evidence showing Hunter lied repeatedly to investigators in his sworn congressional testimony in February, prompting House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith to raise the prospect of perjury charges against the first son. Shapley also produced a document that adds further weight to the suspicion that Hunter's "sugar brother" ... Kevin Morris, was under CIA protection. Hunter lied about his shakedown WhatsApp message to CEFC employee Raymond Zhao on July 30, 2017, said Smith, when his committee voted to publicly release the new whistleblower documents. "These documents make clear that Hunter Biden was using his father's name to shake down a Chinese businessman – and it worked. And when confronted by congressional investigators about it, he lied," the panel said. The CIA's shadowy hand can be seen elsewhere in the Hunter Biden story, including in the rapid approval of the "Dirty 51" letter signed by 51 former intelligence operatives (mainly from the CIA) before the 2020 election that falsely claimed that Hunter's laptop was Russian disinformation.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.
Amazon has been accused of using "intrusive algorithms" as part of a sweeping surveillance program to monitor and deter union organizing activities. Workers at a warehouse run by the technology giant on the outskirts of St Louis, Missouri, are today filing an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). A copy of the charge ... alleges that Amazon has "maintained intrusive algorithms and other workplace controls and surveillance which interfere with Section 7 rights of employees to engage in protected concerted activity". There have been several reports of Amazon surveilling workers over union organizing and activism, including human resources monitoring employee message boards, software to track union threats and job listings for intelligence analysts to monitor "labor organizing threats". Artificial intelligence can be used by warehouse employers like Amazon "to essentially have 24/7 unregulated and algorithmically processed and recorded video, and often audio data of what their workers are doing all the time", said Seema N Patel ... at Stanford Law School. "It enables employers to control, record, monitor and use that data to discipline hundreds of thousands of workers in a way that no human manager or group of managers could even do." The National Labor Relations Board issued a memo in 2022 announcing its intent to protect workers from AI-enabled monitoring of labor organizing activities.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Big Tech and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.
Burkina Faso's military summarily executed more than 220 civilians, including at least 56 children, in two villages in late February, according to a new report by Human Rights Watch. "We saw the bloody corpses riddled with bullets. We were able to save a 2-year-old child whose mother was killed shielding him with her body," a 19-year-old witness [said]. "The attackers were soldiers from our own army. They arrived on motorbikes and in vehicles, and they were armed with Kalashnikovs and heavy weapons." The mass killings came as the U.S. counterterrorism strategy in the West African Sahel crumbled, with U.S.-trained military officers launching a long string of coups, including in Burkina Faso itself. Despite the coups and massacres, the U.S. has not cut ties with Burkina Faso, and a contingent of U.S. personnel remain in-country to "engage" with the armed forces serving the ruling junta. The United States has assisted Burkina Faso with counterterrorism aid since the 2000s, providing funds, weapons, equipment, and American advisers, as well as deploying commandos. In 2018 and 2019, alone, the U.S. pumped a total of $100 million in "security cooperation" funding into Burkina Faso, making it one of the largest recipients of U.S. military aid in West Africa. U.S.-trained Burkinabè military officers have also repeatedly overthrown their government. At the same time, militant Islamist violence skyrocketed. Burkina Faso ... suffered 7,762 fatalities from militant Islamist attacks last year.
Note: Since 2008, the US has supported at least nine coups in African countries, with a vast network of military bases scattered across the continent. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.
Catherine Herridge – the acclaimed CBS News investigative journalist known for her reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop scandal – accused the network of "journalistic rape" for seizing her files after she was fired during a House Judiciary Committee hearing. "CBS News' decision to seize my reporting records crossed a red line that I believe should never be crossed by any media organization," Herridge said. "Multiple sources said they were concerned that by working with me to expose government corruption and misconduct they would be identified and exposed." Herridge, who had spent nearly five years at the network after being hired away from Fox News, was among 20 CBS News staffers let go as part of a larger purge of 800 employees by Paramount. Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) asked Herridge if she wrote critical stories about Hunter Biden, the laptop, the Biden family, the business operation and the Biden brand. Herridge replied: "I reported out the facts of the story." "You sure did," Jordan said. "You reported the facts and then CBS fired you!" The House Judiciary Committee also heard testimony from former CBS News reporter Sharyl Attkisson, who quit the network in 2014 over claims that CBS killed stories that put then-President Barack Obama in a bad light. Attkisson's told the committee that her critical reporting of the government resulted in her phone being tapped.
Note: While Hunter Biden was indicted for three felony gun charges and nine counts of tax-related crimes, his laptop also revealed suspicious business dealings with corrupt overseas firms. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.
A debate about media bias has broken out at National Public Radio after a longtime employee published a scathing letter accusing the broadcaster of a "distilled worldview of a very small segment of the US population". In the letter published on Free Press, NPR's senior business editor Uri Berliner claimed Americans no longer trust NPR – which is partly publicly funded – because of its lack of "viewpoint diversity." Berliner wrote that "an open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now, predictably, we don't have an audience that reflects America". Berliner noted that in 2011 the public broadcaster's audience identified as 26% conservative, 23% as middle of the road and 37% liberal. Last year it identified as 11% very or somewhat conservative, 21% as middle of the road, and 67% very or somewhat liberal. "We weren't just losing conservatives; we were also losing moderates and traditional liberals," Berliner wrote. Berliner identified the station's coverage of the Covid-19 lab leak theory, Hunter Biden's laptop and allegations that Donald Trump colluded with Russia in the 2016 election as all examples of how "politics were blotting out the curiosity and independence that ought to have been driving our work". When he brought up [a] survey of newsroom political voter registration at a 2021 all-staff meeting, showing there were no Republicans, he claimed he was met with "profound indifference".
Note: Read Berliner's full article about how NPR misled the public on the most important issues making front page news. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.
A veteran National Public Radio journalist slammed the left-leaning broadcaster for ignoring the Hunter Biden laptop scandal because it could have helped Donald Trump get re-elected. Uri Berliner, an award-winning business editor and reporter at NPR, penned a lengthy essay ... in which he called out his bosses for turning the public radio broadcaster into "an openly polemical news outlet serving a niche audience." "The laptop was newsworthy," Berliner wrote. "But the timeless journalistic instinct of following a hot story lead was being squelched." The Post was the first to reveal the existence of the laptop that Hunter Biden left at a Delaware computer shop. The Post published the contents of emails taken from the laptop, which shed light on Hunter Biden's business dealings in Ukraine and China while his father, Joe Biden, was vice president during the Obama administration. Initially, national security experts and former intelligence officials declared the laptop a hoax and was the product of a Russian disinformation campaign. Social media sites like Twitter even barred its users from sharing links to The Post's reporting. The authenticity of the emails were later confirmed. According to Berliner, NPR's managing editor for news at the time said that the outlet had no interest in "[wasting] our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don't want to waste the listeners' and readers' time on stories that are just pure distractions."
Note: While Hunter Biden was indicted for three felony gun charges and nine counts of tax-related crimes, his laptop also revealed suspicious business dealings with corrupt overseas firms. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.
Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news articles on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.