It’s useful to read what the media actually wrote at the time rather than how Republicans portray it. I’ve included a number of links below but the main thing which is obvious is that coverage was dominated by the questions of authenticity and especially the challenges of not having a forensic trail which wasn’t tainted by Giuliani, who was so unreliable that even Fox News warned reporters not go trust him. A lot of that coverage also focused on how Fox and the WSJ passed on the story because they couldn’t verify key details, or how the Post’s own journalists had reservations because they couldn’t verify details such as whether an email ever got a reply or particular meetings actually happened. Years later, the story remains the same: some relatively boring details have been confirmed but nothing explosive has been found and evidence of tampering likely means that if something was buried in there Giuliani would have helped Hunter Biden by tainting the evidence to the point that it wouldn’t stand up in court.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/18/business/media/new-york-p...

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/22/us/politics/hunter-biden-...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/10/14/hunter-bi...

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/ratcliffe...

https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-twitter-limit-sharing-...

https://www.npr.org/2020/10/17/924506867/analysis-questionab...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hunter-joe-biden-ema...