Hunter Biden to Leave Chinese Company Board
AP
We ran the numbers: There are 1417 news articles covering this topic. 48% (678) are left leaning, 34% (481) center, 18% (258) right leaning.
On Sunday, former vice president Joe Biden’s son Hunter announced that he will step down from the board of a Chinese company by the end of the month. Left-leaning articles covering the announcement tend to stress that this provides Biden with a strong answer should he be questioned about potential conflicts of interest in his presidential campaign, while right-leaning articles tend to claim that the Biden campaign has handled their centrality in the impeachment investigation poorly and centrist articles focus on the details of Biden’s plan to maintain ethics in his administration.
A left-leaning New York Times article on Hunter Biden’s announcement notes that this is the first step that the Bidens have taken to mitigate the harmful effect of Hunter Biden’s business dealings to his father’s campaign. The article clearly states that there is no evidence that either Biden or his son engaged in improper business dealings, as President Trump contends. However, the article reports, “many on the Biden team are gravely concerned about the president’s ability to inflict damage with a barrage of claims that, while baseless, could nevertheless take hold in voters’ views of the race.”
In contrast, a right-leaning article from the New York Post focuses on Trump’s reaction to the Bidens’ announcement. Trump predicted via Twitter that the news media will coddle Hunter Biden by asking him softball questions and not pressing him for details on his business dealings. Right-leaning articles in general tend to suggest that the Biden campaign has been less than deft in handling allegations that Biden and his son were engaged in improper business dealings in Ukraine.
Centrist coverage from NPR focuses on Biden’s new government ethics plan, which was released on Monday. The plan seeks to limit conflicts of interest, create a stricter firewall between the White House and the Department of Justice, and ensure that all candidates for federal office release ten years of their tax returns. The analysis suggests that Biden is “trying to refocus this entire ethics debate back on Trump, back on his administration,” and notes that he has not, like other Democrats, called attention to the fact that Trump’s children have been making money overseas during the Trump administration. All three of the articles note that there is no evidence that Hunter Biden has committed any wrongdoing.
From the left
Hunter Biden to leave Chinese company board addressing appearance of a conflict
New York Times