One journalist's fever dream
About a nightmare months ago, re texting with Paul Manafort for a story, and the importance of diligence and accuracy
Hi friends, I’m sharing this great piece from Kyle Paoletta in the Columbia Journalism Review, out this morning, looking at how former president Donald Trump could possibly use the Espionage Act to stifle reporting from the White House if he wins re-election.
It’s thoughtful, well-reported and filled with important context — including previous administrations’ prosecutions of reporters for publishing information they didn’t want out there. I’ve been covering Trump for almost a decade now, I’m fortunate to have had excellent professional training and a well developed sense of how to vet information in the purposely foggy world of politics.
An anecdote from me that Kyle included in there was my anxiety around publishing a pair of scoops on Paul Manafort earlier this year with my colleagues Warren Rojas and Pilar Belendez-DeSha.
You can read them here:
One of the things that we do as professional reporters which doesn’t often get a lot of airing, but perhaps should more often, is vet information for accuracy. The old adage in J-school and newsrooms of yore is “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.” Just because someone says something makes it accurate. That’s especially true in our current media and political environment.
So, given the sensitivity of both these Manafort scoops and seeing as we didn’t have an entire newsroom at our beck and call, Warren, Pilar and I “bulletproofed” the stories ourselves. Reading and re-reading drafts for precision and talking about how it was that we knew a certain fact to be accurate.
I remember a few months after we popped the second Manafort scoop on him backchanneling advice to Trump through top campaign aides Chris LaCivita and Tony Fabrizio, I had a journalist fever dream. In the dream, the person I’m texting with seemed to be Manafort but actually wasn’t.
I woke up spooked and couldn’t get back to sleep — was that really Manafort’s phone number??
It was.
Back when we were writing the first Manafort scoop in March I had performed a blindcheck on his cell number to make extra certain we were right. I talked to a source who had access to data, including phone numbers. I asked them to read me the number they had for Manafort. It was the same one I had.
After I remembered the extra check on Manafort’s number I’d performed, I was able to get back to sleep.
Why bring this up now, aside from the fact that Paoletta’s CJR piece just published? Because it is central to why I have covered the race this year as an independent reporter, dedicated to the craft and the profession at a time when some very powerful people are doing their damndest to pump the public sphere full of hoaxes and bullshit.
Reality matters.
To all my longtime readers and supporters, thank you for your votes of confidence. To my newest readers, greetings, and count on more like the Manafort scoops.
If you’re not already a paying supporter of 24sight News, please think about supporting me here. Fever dreams aside, I crank away to bring you important stories which otherwise wouldn’t see the light of day.
…and one reader’s nightmare. Fascists always go after the free press first. They know it’s the best way to stifle opposition. Keep on keeping on Tom. You’re a warrior, even if you did not sign up for this battle. We are all in this together.