This “Huh huh Hunter Biden’s laptop” story is too dubious even for Fox News.

Mediaite has learned that Fox News was first approached by Rudy Giuliani to report on a tranche of files alleged to have come from Hunter Biden’s unclaimed laptop left at a Delaware computer repair shop, but that the news division chose not to run the story unless or until the sourcing and veracity of the emails could be properly vetted.

With the general election just three weeks away, Giuliani ultimately brought the story to the New York Post, which shares the same owner, Rupert Murdoch.

And an even worse reputation.

But even New York Post reporters didn’t want their names on the story.

On Sunday night, the New York Times reported that the New York Post had a difficult time finding a reporter to put their byline on the story amidst internal concerns about its dubious sourcing. The Times reported that the staff writer who mostly wrote the story, Bruce Golding, refused put his name on the report because he doubted its credibility. Post editors then “pressed staff members to add their bylines to the story — and at least one aside from Mr. Golding refused,” according to the Times report, which cited two unnamed Post journalists. 

Normally reporters want their bylines on a story…

Concerns that Giuliani has been targeted by Russian intelligence to launder election misinformation about Biden raised more concerns about the reporting. According to the Washington Post, the U.S. intelligence community made that assessment last year, and went so far as to warn the president that Giuliani could be an unwitting conduit of false or manipulated claims, with the goal of sowing dissension and chaos in the 2020 election.

Questions of Giuliani’s credibility are well-founded. President Trump’s personal attorney has admitted that he is looking to dig up any negative information that could benefit his client.

And by “information” he doesn’t mean “true information” but just…stuff.

While Fox’s news division appears to have applied basic journalistic standards in declining to run such an explosive story without verification, much of the network’s opinion programming has covered the story and even had Giuliani on air to tout it, using the Post’s reporting as its shield while blaming the rest of the media for not covering it. Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum also had Giuliani on to discuss the story the day after it broke.

That’s cute. The news people won’t touch it but the opinion people are all over it, so…win-win.