It’s not that the Atlantic’s Editor-in-Chief, Jeffery Goldberg, has the journalistic ethics of a drunk National Enquirer reporter. It’s that the entire media spreads his gossip without a hint of skepticism.
A new hit piece from the Atlantic, reminiscent of an old hit piece from the publication, reported that former President Donald Trump belittled a dead soldier and praised Hitler’s generals (and what self-respecting piece about Trump doesn’t mention der Fuhrer?)
The first thing to remember is that Goldberg could literally make up any quote from an alleged “anonymous” source, and he would face no repercussions. No major outlet will challenge the veracity of his shoddy work, which breaks numerous journalistic norms, because his accusations are aimed at the right target. The media, after all, is now the democracy-saving business.
The owner of the famed magazine certainly doesn’t give one wit about its integrity either. The Atlantic, which loses tens of millions of dollars every year, is owned by billionaire Laurene Powell Jobs, who isn’t worried about the magazine’s 164-year tradition of “challenging assumptions and pursuing truth.” Rather, as she explained to her ”close” and “genuine” friend, Vice President Kamala Harris, at an event not long ago, she wants to lift up “cultural narratives” that will create “a more just and equal society.”
Goldberg’s 2024 narrative is suffering from the same problems his 2020 “suckers and losers” hit piece did. Anonymous sources make claims that a bunch of on-the-record people contradict. There’s a 0% chance that any reputable newspaper, 10-20 years ago, would have run a story about a president demeaning fallen American servicemen based on an anonymous source without any corroboration.
Recall that, back in 2020, the entire establishment media and numerous social media platforms refused to share the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop scoop, which richly detailed how the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate and his son were involved in an international influence peddling scheme. The story, they said, could not be independently verified.
Now, it was funny because the media had spent over four years decimating their reputations by spreading histrionic conspiracy theories about Russian collusion. Indeed, the New York Post exercised a far higher standard of professionalism than any of them. Incidentally, every part of the Hunter Biden story was confirmed true not only by numerous on-the-record sources but also by Hunter Biden himself.
It was also funny because a month earlier, Goldberg published his “suckers and losers” piece, and virtually every media outlet spread the story as a fact, though none had verified the story.
They’re doing the same thing again.
Most of Goldberg’s new piece, “Trump: ‘I Need the Kind of Generals That Hitler Had,” treads over the customary ground. The most sensational claim revolves around Army Pvt. Vanessa Guillen, who was murdered at Fort Hood in April 2020.
In Goldberg’s telling of the story, Trump initially volunteered to help with the funeral costs but went into a complete rage when hearing the price.
“It doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a f***ing Mexican!” the former president allegedly yelled before ordering his chief-of-staff, Mark Meadows, not to pay.
Now, Trump says a lot of insane things, but color me skeptical on this one. It is quite odd, indeed, that it took more than four years for this astonishing tale to surface. By sheer happenstance, it hit only three weeks away from Election Day.
Similar to the “suckers and losers” piece, not one person is on the record confirming the event. Meadows denied it happened. Guillen’s sister and the family’s lawyer denied it happened. Guillen’s friend denied it happened. Ben Williamson, a White House communications person who was there, told Goldberg that Trump “absolutely did not say that” and “that is not true.”
You can believe him or not. However, what did Goldberg do? He wrote that Williams “didn’t hear Trump say it,” which tells you plenty about the integrity of the piece.
On the same day that the Atlantic hit piece dropped, the New York Times ran an interview with Trump’s antagonist, John Kelly, who played a big part in both Atlantic pieces.
“Confirming a statement he gave to CNN last year, Mr. Kelly said that on multiple occasions Mr. Trump told him that those Americans wounded, captured or killed in action were ‘losers and suckers,’” the outlet wrote.
However, Kelly didn’t confirm the story on “CNN last year.” He began his answer to CNN host Jake Tapper like so: “What can I add that has not already been said?” and then merely repeated the Atlantic’s “reporting.”
Never once in that interview did Kelly explicitly say he heard Trump demean dead servicemen at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery or anywhere else. Kelly’s answers are always cryptic, but they keep telling a bigger story. When asked if Trump “basically” called troops “suckers and losers,” Kelly responded, “Yes.” Was it “basically” or verbatim? Because Goldberg and the New York Times put quotation marks around the words, which once meant something in journalism.
It’s also odd that Kelly, whose own son was killed in Afghanistan, heard Trump, then-president, who he believes to be a Hitler-loving fascist, mock his own child as a “sucker and loser” on numerous occasions, and said nothing for six years. Kelly is now saying that the president was regularly demeaning fallen heroes in the White House. So, how has not one other person heard it?
Anyway, journalistically, it doesn’t really matter if Kelly said he was an anonymous source in Goldberg’s story. No other person has verified his claims. Kelly detests Trump. He said the man is an authoritarian sociopath. He may well rationalize lying as a means of saving the country, which is standard behavior. We don’t know because no impartial second source has ever verified his claims, and we can’t bore into his soul.
This is why even biased journalists of old offered supporting facts and corroborating sources. The Washington Post‘s Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein might have hated former President Richard Nixon, but they didn’t transcribe “Deep Throat”’s comments. They verified them with reporting. Goldberg not only transcribed what his sources told him, perhaps some of them lived in his imagination, there is no way of knowing, but he has routinely ignored evidence that his claims are untrue.
However, more importantly, using anonymity is meant to undercut the ability of real journalists to verify a story. For example, under what standard was Kelly given anonymity in 2020 (if he was the source)? Was his life in danger? Was speaking a national security threat? Kelly had already been fired and was campaigning against Trump, so it’s not as if he couldn’t speak up. He was given anonymity because it would be impossible to corroborate or debunk his claims without knowing who was involved.
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Now, we have two anonymous sources telling us that Trump refused to pay for the funeral of a murdered Army private. By now, one hopes most people understand how the game works. Goldberg published a non-falsifiable October surprise. Other outlets, unlikely to run wholly uncorroborated claims themselves, can spread the smear without verification. They did this to Justice Brett Kavanaugh. They’re going to keep doing it.
Barely anyone trusts journalists anymore. This is one reason why.