The New York Times has issued a correction after the paper misquoted Hunter Biden when he denied his father, Joe Biden, was financially involved in his business dealings.
Hunter made the statement during a Wednesday press conference on Capitol Hill, the same day he was scheduled to be deposed behind closed doors. His comments were not accurately reported by the Gray Lady paper, which made note of the article change.
"An earlier version of this article misquoted Hunter Biden. He said, 'My father was not financially involved in my business,' not, 'My father was not involved in my business.'
"The Times' misquotation of Hunter is notable, given his language has been a source of emphasis among media journalists.
JOE BIDEN FRUSTRATED AND ANXIOUS ABOUT HUNTER, SNAPS AT AIDES WHEN ASKED ABOUT INVESTIGATION: REPORT
White House Spokesperson for Oversight and Investigations Ian Sams recently accused CNN anchor Phil Mattingly of pushing GOP talking points when he asked whether Hunter had intentionally used the "financially involved" language.
The line of questioning led to a tense exchange, with Sams disputing the premise of Mattingly's conclusion.
"It's one of Jim Jordan's favorite little shiny objects, is to try to take a semantic thing and make an argument that is somehow far afield from what they're focused on," he said, referencing Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.
Sams also suggested that Republicans have been using "semantic games" to distract from "the actual truth," claiming the allegations against Biden have been "debunked."
The White House and Biden have maintained that the president was "never in business" with his son. Biden has also said he never spoke to his son about his business dealings, but evidence – like email records and testimony from Hunter Biden's former business partners – presented by House Republicans in their investigations seem to contradict those statements.
Later that week, former Times opinion editor James Bennet published an essay in The Economist claiming the Times had "lost its way."
Bennet was asked to resign in 2020 after the section published an op-ed from Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton in the wake of the killing of George Floyd. It posited the idea of deploying U.S. troops to protect lives and curb damage against businesses resulting from Black Lives Matter riots, resulting in an internal revolt at the newspaper.
"The Times's problem has metastasized from liberal bias to illiberal bias, from an inclination to favor one side of the national debate to an impulse to shut debate down altogether," he wrote in The Economist.
He added that the Times is now becoming a publication in which the American progressive elite "talks to itself" about a United States that "does not really exist."
