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Some politicians face threats to their livelihood.
In recent weeks news stories about offensive or ill-advised text messages in a chat group have ruined the careers of several young Republicans, leading to a nomination for the nomination. white House Threatened to quit, threatening a Democrat’s campaign Virginia Embarrassed the Attorney General and a federal prosecutor.
Memories are still fresh of a journalist’s unwitting involvement in the signals chain this spring, where the Secretary of Defense pete hegseth And other leaders discussed the military strikes, which was possibly the second most embarrassing moment of the Trump administration.
For journalists, it’s something else entirely. Bad smartphone behavior is fertile ground for journalists seeking information about the people who want to lead us — and presents a challenge to kill stories when “it’s fake” comes up as the default defense.
An unfiltered look at how public people express themselves in private
Paul Ingrassia, who was President donald trumpThe pick to lead the office of special counsel withdrew his name from consideration on Tuesday. After this his Senate support was broken politicoAn October 20 report said Ingrassia had said in a text series that he had “Nazi tendencies” and believed the federal holiday honoring the birth of Martin Luther King Jr. should be thrown into hell.
Less than a week ago, Politico exposed a Telegram chat group with leaders of young Republican groups across the country that recklessly engaged in racist and violent conversations. So far, the outlet says seven people have lost their jobs because of the story.
Alex Burns, its senior executive editor, said, “One of the reasons this is such an important line of coverage for POLITICO right now is that it gives readers as unfiltered a look as they’re going to get into the way powerful people think and express themselves in private.”
He described the texts as one of the few remaining frontiers of unknown authenticity. He recalls past moments of infamy, such as when President Richard Nixon made the wrong decision to tape his White House conversation, the transcripts of which brought the phrase “expletives removed” into the American lexicon.
There have been countless serious moments captured on “hot” microphones, such as during the Cold War with the Soviet Union, when President Ronald Reagan joked before a 1984 radio address that “We start bombing in five minutes.” Most public figures are now aware that virtually everyone around them carries a smartphone equipped with a video camera.
Some of the recently discovered text messages – calling black people monkeys or “watermelon people”, images of gas chambers or urinating on the graves of opponents – are surprising and dark. You can’t help but wonder: What were they thinking? Were they thinking?
Probably not, partly because texting is such a ubiquitous, low-friction form of communication in today’s world, said Cal Newton, a professor of computer science at Georgetown University. The precautions people take when talking to other people – be appropriate, civil, careful – are often missing.
Some parts of our brain “can’t recognize text like ‘I am interacting with other people’ on a glowing piece of glass,” Newton said. Bad impulses, and tendencies to escalate or exaggerate, are exacerbated because they cannot see reactions.
Still, it’s not like people don’t understand on some level that they’re communicating on a medium where conversations can be saved on screen shots. Some of the chats contained nervous warning signs: “If this chat of ours ever got leaked we would be betrayed,” said one young Republican.
It reminds Sarah Kreps, a Cornell University professor who teaches about the intersection of politics and technology, of politicians whose careers are ruined by affairs. Everyone sees the cautionary tales, but it doesn’t stop the behavior.
“It’s overconfidence – ‘This can’t happen to me. It happens to other people and it won’t let me down,'” said Kreps.
A higher standard for newsworthiness in private conversations
Beyond text, Burns said Politico is in the market for other practical open source reporting, such as audio, video or behind-the-scenes memos. He wouldn’t say whether the Ingrassia texts came as a direct result of Politico’s handling of his previous story, but he believes his outlet has proven it handled these stories responsibly.
There is a high threshold of newsworthiness for reporting on private communications, he said.
“We’re not throwing stuff out there that’s just embarrassing or obscene,” Burns said. “There’s a specific reason why this content is newsworthy and we’re explaining in stories why we think it’s more than just people talking nonsense in private.”
While Politico’s stories made an immediate impact on careers, voters will ultimately decide the impact of National Review’s October 3 story on Virginia Attorney General candidate Jay Jones. In a message to a former aide in 2022, Jones said former Virginia Republican House Speaker Todd Gilbert should get “two bullets in the head.” He described Gilbert’s children dying in their mother’s arms.
Jones has apologized for the texts and does not dispute their accuracy.
In a statement to Politico for its story, Ingrassia’s attorney Edward Andrew Paltzik said he does not accept the authenticity of the “alleged” messages. “In this age of AI, authentication of purportedly leaked messages, which may be completely false, doctored, or manipulated, or lack important context, is extremely difficult,” he said.
Telling the public why they should believe the reports
The ability to fabricate something that seems real, combined with public distrust in the media, forces news organizations to tell readers as much as possible how content was verified without breaking confidential sources’ agreements.
In its story about the January 2024 chat that included Ingrassia, Politico said it interviewed two other participants. It explained why the sources were allowed to remain anonymous and the person who showed the entire series to journalists explained why they came forward. The second person verified Ingrassia’s phone number.
For a story in Lawfare this week about how Lindsey Halligan, the Virginia prosecutor behind the case against New York Attorney General Letitia James, messaged reporter Anna Bower on Signal to complain about some of her reporting, Bower detailed how she made sure it was actually hers. Bower assumed it was a hoax; It is rare for a US attorney to contact a journalist in a high-profile case.
She had met Halligan once years earlier, and asked the sender of the message to tell her when that meeting was and who she was with. After the person answered correctly, Bower checked through another source to see if the phone number the messages came from was indeed Halligan’s.
Halligan later complained that their text conversation was off the record. Bower explained the rules of journalism to readers: A source must assume that a conversation with a reporter is on the record unless there is an express agreement made ahead of time – and that was not done.
The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, wrote in detail about how he dealt with being added to the Signal Text series about military operations. They too initially thought it was a hoax. When he was convinced it was true he removed himself from the chat group, then received confirmation from the National Security Council.
Burns said: “The burden is always on us to show the reader why we are absolutely confident that the material is authentic.”
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David Bauder writes for the AP about the intersection of media and entertainment. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social