Thread by @ByronYork

What standard of proof should apply to the Hunter Biden laptop story? GOP, conservatives should avoid falling into a trap--call it the 'can't prove untrue' trap--that Dems, media fell into with dossier. 1/10 washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/byron-…

When Buzzfeed dumped entire dossier on web in January 2017, all could see it was preposterous. But who could say for absolute sure? New book OBSESSION reports Trump transition team's reaction to publication: 2/10 amazon.com/Obsession-Insi…

Now, imagine if Biden campaign took similar approach to Hunter Biden laptop story. They could address a few threshold questions like: Is the laptop Hunter Biden's? Did he drop it off at a repair shop and then fail to retrieve it? 3/10

Then journalists could try to verify the story. Some are doing that right now. But many are instead trying to knock it down, suggesting without evidence that it is Russian disinformation, or focusing on staff tiffs at New York Post. 4/10

But think back to dossier. Journalists tried very hard to verify it. So did FBI. They failed. Then Dems, media allies adopted new standard: It must be true because it had not definitively been proven untrue. 5/10

'Not a single revelation in the Steele dossier has been refuted,' said Feinstein. 'Nothing in the (Trump) dossier... has been shown to be false,' said Tribe. 'The dossier has not been proven false,' said MSNBC's Wallace. 6/10

On 'Meet the Press,' Chuck Todd to former CIA director John Brennan: 'So far with this dossier, nothing has yet been proven untrue. How significant is that? Brennan: 'Just because they were unverified does not mean they were not true.' 7/10

It was the wrong standard to apply to the dossier, to the journalists' everlasting discredit. Now, it is the wrong standard to apply to the Hunter Biden emails. 8/10

It's not fair Hunter Biden email story must be true because it has not been proven false. Rather, job is to try to find what evidence supports it and what does not. Fox News has already made some progress on that front. 9/10

But more work needs to be done. Don't look for any help from media organizations trying to kill the story. But for other, more traditionally open-minded journalists, it's an important job at an important moment. 10/10 End. washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/byron-…