Comment by no_circuit | Hacker News Reader

Comment by no_circuit | Hacker News Reader

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The lives of family members of politicians and government employees should be completely on-limits for news coverage, provided that could be newsworthy, because using one's family is one method of laundering corruption.

Let's say for example you need a permit approved by the CITYNAME Department of Buildings. CITYNAME is slow to process permit applications, but it is common knowledge that using a particular expeditor consulting company actually helps to get your permit approved quickly. It would definitely be newsworthy if that consulting company was owned by a spouse, sibling, parent, cousin, etc. of someone in the building department. I personally know someone who was not able to open up a store in a city I lived because the inspector literally said something was deficient and recommended some local company nearby to "fix it" for approximately $50,000.

It is a similar reason why working in an investment bank, at least in the US, you have to agree that both you and your close family members must agree to trading restrictions so as not to pose a conflict of interest with any of the bank's clients. If such a restriction was not in place, then it would be easy to just pass insider information to your spouse or brother and have them make money based on news that is about to be announced.

Yes, using one's family can be used to launder money. But it can also be used to smear others. And because of that some prudence is required. And since all of the facts on that particular case have come out by now - or at least, given the ones that did come out without knowing whether or not that is exhaustive - I'd say the NPR made the right call.

It is unfortunate that the news would have been too close to the election, so I have some understanding why some news organizations handled the story they did.

I liken this to the Google, and other tech companies, interviewing process. It is better to miss out on a good hire, than hire (or elect) someone that was a false positive for good. So based on reasonable doubt or suspicion, a story like this should cause anyone connected to be considered not a good choice for government employment anywhere since it could cause the US to be taken advantage of by any relevant other countries.

They didn't just pass on the story, they put out negative commentary about it by calling it a distraction without even bothering to explain how they arrived at that.

There's a reason for that:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/02/13/hunter-bi...

> The article said that more than 50 former senior intelligence officials, including five CIA chiefs, had signed a letter saying the release of the emails “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

It’s weird to give a reason why NPR didn’t do something by citing an article from February of the following year.

The story was suspicious for many reasons, is the point.

And that’s why our intelligence apparatus is not a trusted source. Individuals within this institution are willing to game their status for reputation and sell it to the highest bidder. Look how the Pentagon is handling the leak of the Ukrainian papers, not to mention corporate journalist condemning the leak.

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