As we were wrapping up our newspaper lineup Tuesday afternoon, this headline exploded suddenly on CNN:
“Intel chiefs presented Trump with claims of Russian efforts to compromise him”.
Setting aside that these words were challenging to assemble into useful English, it was clear that an already odd political narrative was taking yet another even odder twist.
We don’t rely on CNN for national news – not that there’s anything wrong with CNN or Fox and friends — because they don’t really produce newspaper stories. So our wire editors began the hunt for something from our usual sources such as The New York Times, Washington Post, Associated Press, etc. We generally count on our major news partners for national and world news because we focus our energies on Metro Atlanta and Georgia.
Soon a story arrived that more or less said that President-elect Donald Trump and President Barack Obama had been briefed on unsubstantiated reports from an identified source that were damaging to the new president. Not exactly stellar journalism.
I cautioned against using the early “dossier” story until something more solid arrived. Even then, I had mixed feelings because this emerging story was based on assertions that no one had found to be true despite a considerable effort at verification.
As the evening wore on, more-complete stories arrived, providing a firmer account of what had happened. In the end, we used a story from The Washington Post on our front page that made clear that the odd, unverified report had been attached to the security briefing provided by the security establishment to the once and future presidents.
The newsiness seemed evident: We were reporting that our government was taking these unfounded allegations seriously enough to inform Trump and Obama and launch investigators. When it comes to the presidency, we have no duty above providing citizens as much as we responsibly can.
Yet, that word, “responsibly” nagged at me.
Journalists live in a complex time when being responsible often is at war with being transparent. I come from a tradition that abhors publishing anything we haven’t verified. Over the years, AJC reporters have gotten their hands on unverified “opposition research” against important people in Georgia that would make your hair stand up. Yet, we would never allow any of it to see the light of day until we can promise you that we can prove the allegations in the files. Moreover, we would never surprise anyone with damaging allegations: We tell folks what we’re up to and allow them to respond. This is true in most newsrooms.
At his former newspaper in South Carolina, Leroy Chapman, now a deputy managing editor here, received an anonymous email eight years ago that seemed to include a running conversation between then-Gov. Mark Sanford and a woman who was not his wife. Leroy described them as “romantic and racy and damning for a politician growing in national profile and ambition.”
But reporters couldn’t verify them. The paper held onto them for nearly six months until Sanford infamously disappeared on a supposed hike on the Appalachian Trail. The emails then became an essential clue to the governor’s actual whereabouts; even so, the newspaper still didn’t publish them. Ultimately, facing the paper’s demands for an explanation, Sanford confessed the whole thing. Only then did the newspaper publish the emails - after verifying them.
This, folks, has been the norm. This may be surprising to those who think us wanton purveyors of slime and innuendo. Far from it: There long has been a special place in hell for reporters who contrive to sneak unverified and harmful accusations into their stories under the banner of disclosing all.
Our reason to exist is that we verify; this distinguishes journalism from gossip.
Reassuringly, this point of view even prevailed with the “dossier” story for months. On the night CNN broke the story, Twitter was afire with reporters who portrayed it as the worst-kept secret in town. Yet, no one – save the partisan and unconventional magazine Mother Jones – had been willing to publish its contents.
CNN forced it into the open, and everyone predictably followed suit, but still stopping short of publishing the juicy details. Enter Buzzfeed, the click factory that dreams of being a newsroom. It posted the entire 35-page unverified and damaging dossier.
To me, this was a buzz too far – but I’m aware that my outrage may seem quaint.
BuzzFeed went full Monty because its editor, Ben Smith, holds a much simpler worldview: “When in doubt, publish.”
This clashes with the venerable old voice (for me, it’s Jason Robards) that thrums in the heads of old hacks: “When in doubt, leave it out.”
This is archaic, Smith would argue. “Publishing this dossier reflects how we see the job of reporters in 2017,” Smith wrote in an explanation that was drafted in obvious expectation of the firestorm (and page views) his decision would produce.
Readers are smart enough to read this report and draw their own conclusions, he argued.
Yes. But. Isn’t it nevertheless wrong to publish smears posing as reports? Isn’t this what we all disliked about Wikileaks?
Most traditional news organizations refrained from publishing the raw report, but in the days sense the story broke, more and more of its unverified assertions have trickled into mainstream reporting – of course with all the dutiful caveats.
The debate in the journalism world pits our traditional role as “gatekeepers” against the emerging view that we must really be “sensemakers,” dispensing even the most dubious information that, whether we like it or not, already is racing through cyberworld. This “sensemaker” camp praises Ben Smith’s transparency while smirking ironically at the traditional obsession with verification. I’m queasy.
Yet, as we debate these finer points, we must realize the “dossier” story has fueled other problems. For one, it feeds the president-elect’s deepening grievance against reporters.
Worse, it diverts attention from the serious matter of Trump’s plan to avert mixing personal with America’s business. It also has confounded unsettling questions over his views on Putin and Russia. At his press conference Wednesday, Trump happily used righteous indignation as a shield against tough questions
Don’t get me wrong; reporters must never ease up to please any president. But we should pick our battles.
Do we really want to stand on a dossier financed by people who wanted to damage Trump, yet were unwilling to deploy the unproven and salacious accusations themselves?
More worrying, this whole mess probably hasn’t done much for our standing with a public that already views reporters somewhere between ambulance chasers and snake-oil peddlers.
Sad.
About the Author
