Journalism today is bloody and bruised at the hands of an authoritarian who, as with all authoritarians, is inconvenienced by the truth and attacks legitimate media speaking that truth. Journalism is not dead, however. Take The Atlantic under Editor Jeffrey Goldberg. The magazine has hit its stride just when we need as much no-punches-pulled reporting as possible.
Sarah Fitzpatrick's recent reporting about the current FBI director for The Atlantic is as essential as it is painful. She earned her investigative journalism chops at NBC News and 60 Minutes. She teaches investigative journalism at Columbia’s Graduate School of journalism, as well, undoubtedly inspiring and equipping new generations of tough-minded journalists. Two recent Atlantic pieces by Fitzpatrick illuminate repeated cases of astonishingly bad judgment on the part of the FBI director. These are meticulously researched stories from many current and former FBI and Justice Department sources. The results of this reporting would be highly problematic with any top government official, but it's frighteningly dangerous in an agency largely known after J. Edgar Hoover's imperious reign for its judgment, prudence, steadiness, and sobriety.
Predictably, of course, the FBI has launched a criminal investigation of a reporter who is simply doing her job, and doing it well. After all, let's not have the First Amendment get in the way of state-sponsored injustice. The FBI director has also filed a $250 million defamation lawsuit against The Atlantic. The latter is a dubious proposition, but let's hope it proceeds because it stands no chance of succeeding and the discovery process will likely reveal even more serious concerns within the FBI.
So much of journalistic excellence today is demonstrated by women such as Sarah Fitzpatrick. They often ask the toughest questions at press conferences and in scrums, only to be called names and denigrated in petty fashion by the commander-in-chief. "You're terrible. You're the worst person. Who are you with?" ... "Oh, everyone knows they're fake news." How about calling Bloomberg's Catherine Lucey "piggy" or criticizing CNN's Kaitlin Collins for never smiling, which apparently girls are supposed to do all the time. Of course, he never answers any of their questions.
I came of age inspired by The Washington Post's Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, but I also entered adulthood when Judge William Webster, a Republican, was nominated by President Carter to lead the FBI and continued to serve in that capacity under President Reagan. Here was a man in every way the opposite of the current FBI boss - extensive relevant background, brilliant, judicious, careful, apolitical, stable, and fair. To measure the span between Judge Webster, who I always admired, and the individual currently running the FBI is to understand how very far we have a fallen as a nation.
