New York Times reporter Adam Goldman presents his speech at the seventh annual Oppenheimer Ethics Symposium Thursday in the Admin Auditorium.
In the age of fake news and animosity between the press and federal government, New York Times reporter Adam Goldman offered some insight.
“The government’s ability to genuinely call out a mistake is lost,” Goldman said during the eighth annual Oppenheimer Ethics Symposium. “That ultimately means that there will be more fake news, which is a loss not just for the government and the press, but more importantly for you, the public at large.”
Goldman, who spoke inside the University of Idaho Administration Building auditorium, advocated for the need for a free press, citing his work reporting on the possible ties between President Donald Trump’s administration and Russia. No president, Goldman said, has affected the truth, reporting and fake news more than Trump.
“All three of those things have consumed my life since Trump became president. Trump has literally turned Washington upside down,” he said. “We’ve been pretty busy trying to keep pace with President Trump.”
Goldman, a Pulitzer Prize winner from 2012, got his start in journalism after briefly serving in the military. A Richmond, Virginia, native, Goldman tried his hand at reporting for a local newspaper in Charlottesville. It was there, he said, that he fell in love with uncovering the truth.
Corrections, Goldman said, even those that ran in the small local paper, would eat at him, making him feel nauseous and incompetent as a reporter.
“I lived in a daily fear of getting the smallest mistakes wrong,” he said. “It was a sign I didn’t do my job right. I was sick to my stomach.”
Goldman said that same feeling followed him to the New York Times, when a person in one of his stories regarding Syria had a birthday between Goldman writing the story and the story being published. Even the most minute details, he said, should be obsessed over by the world’s best journalists.
After leaving the Washington Post, for which he covered terrorism both foreign and domestic, Goldman came to the Times to cover national security and the FBI. Following the 2016 election and the reopening of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails by James Comey, Goldman said he faced his greatest challenge.
“People often ask me what it’s been like reporting on Russia,” he said. “It’s the hardest reporting I’ve ever done in my life.”
Goldman said ever since the Trump administration took control of the White House, the press has been in a constant battle, fighting daily to discern facts from falsehoods. He said many politicians in Washington, D.C., have latched onto the term “fake news” and skewed it to fit their own interest.
“When people in Washington say ‘fake news’ now, what they mean is a story they don’t like,” he said. “I’ve come to realize, and I think most people are smart enough to understand, it’s a gimmick. It’s just a way to dodge the facts. Ultimately, it will lose its power and become just another empty phrase. Sad, as the president would say.”
Trump, however, was not the first president to be at odds with the press. Goldman said during his time working around the Obama administration, valuable sources that provided confidential information would be swiftly punished.
“The Obama administration, like Trump’s, did not like leaks,” he said. “They went after leakers like no other administration had before this, not George W. Bush and certainly not Bill Clinton. They put people in prison. They put our sources in prison.”
Goldman concluded his time at UI by answering audience questions. Daine Johnson, a UI student and resident of southern Idaho, asked if there might be any possible ties between Clinton, Barack Obama and Russia. Johnson said he feared too much attention had been given to Trump’s possible ties with the foreign power, and other possible options had not been explored.
Goldman disagreed, suggesting Johnson’s source of news might have perpetrated false narratives in order to deflect on behalf of the president. However, he did acknowledge that government of any party should be scrutinized.
“When the people in government, any government, whether it’s the Trump administration, whether it’s the Obama administration, whether it’s the Bush administration or whether it’s the Clinton administration, no longer tell you that you are right, there’s no reason to trust them when they say you are wrong,” he said.
Brandon Hill can be reached at [email protected]