CNN host confronts ex-president over 'partisan' choice to ignore Hunter Biden laptop story

A CNN host confronted the network’s former president Jeff Zucker on Saturday, saying the network’s lack of coverage of the Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020 was “partisan.”

And his old boss didn’t disagree.

CNN’s Michael Smerconish hosted a panel on the state of media at the Un-Convention in Philadelphia with Zucker and former MSNBC boss Phil Griffin, reports The Daily Mail.

The convention was billed as “an exploration of political reforms to improve our election systems and policy ideas to govern a divided country.”

In the discussion, Smerconish pressed the two former network heads on how the mainstream media mostly ignored the scandal around Hunter Biden’s laptop. First reported in October 2020, the laptop was dismissed as “Russian disinformation” until the New York Times acknowledged its contents were legitimate in March of this year – 16 months after the 2020 elections.

“I think that the Hunter laptop was worthy of more airing than it received right before the election,” said Smerconish.

Zucker pushed back, claiming the network “did not know enough about it” and pointedly asked if Smerconish himself had covered the story.

“I think I look bad by not talking about it at all. I should have said something about the damn issue,” Smerconish said, admitting he did not give the laptop scandal much airtime, either.

But he added that regardless of not knowing all the facts, “I think that we looked partisan by not giving it some air.”

Zucker responded, “I don’t disagree with that.”

The former CNN president stepped down in February over an undisclosed relationship with a senior executive. His successor has made moves to refocus the network on hard news and said he is willing to forgo short-term profit to do so.

In August, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said that the platform censored the Hunter Biden laptop after being warned of an incoming “dump” of Russian propaganda.