NEW YORK (AP) — Some politicians have threats to their livelihoods on their hands.
Aggressive or reckless news articles in recent weeks text message A chat group blows up the careers of several young Republicans and candidates for the White House job. dropoutwas threatened campaign Democrat running for attorney general of Virginia embarrassing Federal prosecutor.
Memories of this spring are still fresh Inadvertent contamination A journalist appeared on Signal Chain, where Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other leaders were discussing military strikes. This is perhaps the most embarrassing moment of the second Trump administration.
For journalists, it’s something else entirely. Smartphone misbehavior is fertile ground for reporters seeking insight into the people trying to lead us, and stories are hard to pin down when the default defense of “it’s fake” looms.
An unfiltered look at how public people express themselves in private
Paul Ingrassia, President Donald Trump’s nominee to head the Office of Special Counsel, withdrew his name from consideration on Tuesday. His support in the Senate collapsed following Politico’s Oct. 20 Ingrassia report. said in text chain He said he had “Nazi tendencies” and believed the federal holiday commemorating the birth of Martin Luther King Jr. should be thrown into hell.
Less than a week later, Politico revealed: telegram chat groups Leaders of young Republican groups across the country are casually engaging in racist and violent conversations. So far, the outlet said seven people have lost their jobs as a result of the story.
“One of the reasons this is such an important coverage area for Politico right now is because it allows us to give our readers as close, unfiltered, an unfiltered look at how powerful people think and express themselves in private,” said senior editor Alex Burns.
He described the text as one of the few remaining frontiers of inadvertent veracity. They recall ignominious moments from the past, such as when President Richard Nixon made the reckless decision to record a White House conversation that entered the phrase “expletive takedown” into the American lexicon.
There are countless chilling moments captured on “hot” microphones, such as when President Ronald Reagan joked before a 1984 radio address that he would “start bombing in five minutes” during the Cold War with the Soviet Union. Most celebrities today know that almost everyone around them carries around a smartphone with a video camera.
Some of the recently unearthed text messages are startling and dark, including images of monkeys, black people known as “watermelon men”, gas chambers and urinating on the graves of dissidents. I can’t help but wonder what they were thinking. were they thinking?
Cal Newton, a computer science professor at Georgetown University, said that’s probably not the case, since texting is such a popular and low-friction form of communication in today’s world. The guards people keep when talking to others – being reasonable, polite, and cautious – are often lacking.
Part of our brain “doesn’t recognize writing on a piece of glowing glass as ‘conversation with another person,'” Newton says. Bad impulses and tendencies to amplify and exaggerate leak out because you can’t see the response.
Still, that doesn’t mean people don’t understand on some level that they’re communicating in a medium where conversations can be saved in screenshots. Some chats showed red flags of nervousness. “If this chat gets leaked, we’ll be punished,” the young Republican said.
Sarah Krebs, a Cornell University professor who teaches about the intersection of politics and technology, said the incident reminded her of politicians whose careers were ruined by the incident. Everyone sees the warning message, but that doesn’t stop them from doing it.
“There’s an overconfidence. ‘It’s not going to happen to me. It’s going to happen to other people, so don’t let that get you down,'” Krebs said.
The newsworthy hurdle in private conversations
Beyond text, Burns said Politico is looking to the market for insightful open source reporting, including audio, video and behind-the-scenes notes. Although he did not say whether Ingrassia’s article was a direct result of Politico’s handling of previous articles, he believes his news organization has proven it handled those articles responsibly.
Reports on private communications have a high newsworthiness hurdle, he said.
“We’re not just putting something embarrassing or vulgar out there,” Burns said. “There are clear reasons why this material is newsworthy, and we explain in our article why we believe this is more than just people venting their anger in private.”
The Politico article had an immediate career impact, but voters will ultimately decide the impact National Review’s Oct. 3 article will have on Virginia attorney general candidate Jay Jones. In a 2022 text message to a former colleague, Jones said former Virginia Republican House Speaker Todd Gilbert should take “two bullets in the head.” He explained that the Gilbert children died in their mother’s arms.
Jones apologized for the text but did not dispute its accuracy.
Ingrassia’s attorney, Edward Andrew Palczyk, said in a statement in response to the Politico article that he does not accept the authenticity of the “alleged” messages. “In this age of AI, it is extremely difficult to authenticate allegedly leaked messages that are completely false, tampered with, manipulated, or lack critical context,” he said.
Telling the public why they should believe the news
The ability to fabricate something that sounds real, combined with the public’s distrust of the media, forces news organizations to tell readers as much as possible how their material has been verified without breaking contracts with confidential sources.
In its article about the January 2024 chat involving Ingrassia, Politico said it also interviewed two other participants. The sources explained why they were granted anonymity, and the person who showed reporters the entire chain was asked to explain why he had come forward. The second person verified Ingrassia’s phone number.
for law fair story This week, Virginia prosecutor Lindsey Harrigan, who is behind the case against New York Attorney General Letitia James, sent a message to Signal reporter Anna Bower detailing how she confirmed that it was indeed hers to complain about some of her reporting. Bower thought it was a hoax. It is unusual for American lawyers working on high-profile cases to contact journalists.
She said she had met Harrigan once many years ago and asked the texter when and who he was with. After the person answered correctly, Bower checked another source to see if the phone number from which the message was sent really belonged to Harrigan.
Harrigan later complained that the text conversation was off the record. Mr. Bower explained to readers the rules of journalism. Sources must assume that their conversations with reporters will be recorded unless explicitly agreed to in advance, which was not the case.
Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, said: I wrote at length About how he coped with being added to the text chain of signals about military operations. He also thought it was a hoax at first. He removed himself from the chat group after being convinced it was genuine and subsequently received confirmation from the National Security Council.
“The onus is always on us to show our readers why we can be absolutely certain that the material is authentic,” Burns said.
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David Bauder writes about the intersection of media and entertainment for The Associated Press. please follow him http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social
