Expect a LOT of "now it can be told" stories over the next few months and years. 

Now that the Biden administration is in the rear-view mirror, the urge to tell juicy stories--and tell them first or with the most details--will overcome the expectation of silence among journalists and even some Biden insiders. 

To a certain extent, this always happens--there is money and fame at stake--but the Biden stories will be more revelatory than most because so much effort was made to cover up Biden's corruption and declining capacities, not to mention the fact that the Pravda Media was complicit in the perpetration of a hoax after hoax after hoax. 

The latest bombshell came on former POLITICO reporter Tara Palmieri's podcast Somebody's Gotta Win. Palmieri had a conversation with her former POLITICO colleague Marc Caputo, in which they discussed the reason why people lost faith in the media. 

The obvious reason: the Pravda Media covered for Joe Biden, and it became obvious to most that it was doing so. 

Two former Politico reporters, Marc Caputo of Axios and Tara Palmeri of Puck, claimed there were instances in which they felt their ex-employer either killed or resisted negative stories about former President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden on a podcast earlier this week.

Their conversation on Palmeri’s podcast Somebody’s Gotta Win arrived at that point after Caputo submitted that the press has lost the public’s trust by erroneously declaring true or plausible information “misinformation,” and cited the infamous Hunter Biden laptop story as an example.

“Politico did that terrible, ill-fated headline: 51 intelligence agents, or former intelligence agents, say that the Hunter Biden laptop was disinformation, or bore the hallmarks of disinformation. Turns out that story was closer to disinformation because the Hunter Biden laptop appeared to be true,” he observed.

This was, of course, a statement of the unspoken but obvious facts, merely confirming what we already know. 

Where it gets interesting is the outright admission that his editors quashed stories that didn't fit the approved Narrative™.

Politico, my former employer and I knew at the time, didn’t do itself any favors,” said Caputo. “I was covering Biden at the time, and I remember coming to my editor and saying, ‘Hey, we need to write about the Hunter Biden laptop.’ And I was told this came from on high at Politico: Don’t write about the laptop, don’t talk about the laptop, don’t tweet about the laptop. And the only thing Politico wound up writing was that piece that called it disinformation, which charitably could be called misinformation, at the least.”

“Yeah, I mean, I had a hard time — you know I wrote some pretty serious reporting on Hunter Biden, which actually ended up getting him prosecuted — the story on the gun” replied Palmeri, delving into her own trouble to publish stories that could hurt the elder Biden’s political prospects.

“Yeah! And I remember you consulted with me cause you had, you did the original report on the gun and you came to me like, ‘How do I write about this?’ I’m like, ‘Honestly, I don’t know.'” remembered Caputo.

POLITICO denies any such things happened, and rightly noted that not all their stories about Biden were softball, including the gun story that they eventually published written by Palmieri. Of course, getting that story across the finish line was excruciating, in a way that a random accusation against a Republican does not come close to. Palmieri spent three months reporting that story before she could publish a word, despite there being copious evidence long before the publication. 

Last-second, denied on-the-record accusations against Republicans get splashed in headlines. 

“Since we’re spilling tea about our former employer, I still have a copy of the story on my external hard drive. In 2019, a rival presidential Democratic campaign of Joe Biden’s gave to me the tax lien — the oppo research — the tax lien on Hunter Biden for the period of time that he worked at Burisma,” recalled Caputo. “And I wrote what would have been a classic story saying, you know, ‘The former vice president’s son was slapped with a big tax lien for the period of time that he worked for this controversial Ukrainian oil concern, or natural gas concern, which is haunting his father on the campaign trail.'”

“That story was killed by the editors, and they gave no explanation for that either,” he said. “So that general experience, you know, obviously the public doesn’t know about those things, but as a reporter having witnessed the way in which the two candidates-”

“We just get called, like, ‘the terrible mainstream media.’ It’s like you don’t understand the process there,” interjected Palmeri.

“Well, you also don’t understand the dumb decisions of cowardly editors that are made above us,” agreed Caputo.

None of this is shocking but the fact that somebody is saying it aloud. We can only speculate why these two are openly discussing how the sausage is made, but I have a theory that goes like this:

Pravda Media is falling apart, and one of the consequences is that reporters who used to rely on big news organizations are having to build their brands as independent entities lest they lose their income. While a good brand was always a ticket to the top of an organization, in the new media landscape it is vital lest one find oneself without an income. 

Look at CNN, MSNBC, and newsrooms around America. The major media brands are losing relevance, while the personal brands of reporters makes or breaks them. The price you pay for dishing on your former employer is vastly lower than the benefits of standing out. Who would you rather be: Tucker Carlson or Don Lemon? Jim Acosta isn't long for the media world, but Catherine Herridge is thriving. 

The Hunter Biden story was hanging out there for years, and a lot of reporters had to know about many of his shenanigans while Joe was Vice President. Rest assured that Donald Trump, Jr. would not have been given the grace that Hunter was given. It wasn't covered because there was a nearly impenetrable shield put in place by the people who run Pravda. 

That shield is crumbling, if not at the Pravda Media organizations themselves. The cultural power of these organizations is shrinking and as it does the incentive to participate in the protection racket diminishes. The little fish will start telling on the big ones. 

The next few years will be interesting. Trump has dealt a mortal blow to the industry. What comes next will be more versions of journalists going independent, more versions of The Free Press, and, of course, podcasts. 

The old one-stop shop model is dying by suicide.