Author: Jim Rutenberg / Source: New York Times
Drew Angerer/Getty Images
This is, in many respects, a golden age for journalism.
With a president facing multiple federal and state inquiries — including one into whether a foreign government helped get him elected — the press has come through with some investigative work that can stand with the finest Watergate-era reporting.
Among readers and viewers, there’s a new appreciation for shoe-leather reporting. Clicks and subscriptions are up, welcome news for an industry in shaky financial shape.
But the ultimate prize has proved elusive for the scoop-hungry journalists competing to join the reporters’ pantheon alongside Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, whose methodical news-gathering for The Washington Post helped bring down a president alleged to have broken the law.
The perils of the chase were plain to see on Friday night, when the office of the special counsel issued a public denial of what had been widely portrayed as a “bombshell report” from BuzzFeed News.
The site, based in New York, has been as aggressive as any other news outlet in trying to break the Big One. Its latest attempt, published Thursday night, reported that the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, had evidence that President Trump had instructed his former lawyer Michael D. Cohen to lie to Congress.
In their race to get ahead of Mr. Mueller with news that will please much of the electorate while also driving clicks and ratings, however, journalists throughout the media have produced their share of misfires and unforced errors. Each mistake has been a gift to the president, providing fodder for his case that any unflattering reporting about him amounts to “fake news,” and that the special counsel’s investigation is nothing but a “witch hunt.
”The insatiable appetite of social media and cable news for fresh material makes the hunt for big stories even more perilous.
“I say to you on the record, I am thankful I don’t have to cover this story on a daily basis,” said Mr. Woodward, whose latest book, “Fear,” a fly-on-the-wall view of the Trump administration’s first year, has sold some two million copies.
“The hydraulic pressure in the system is just so great,” he added. “The impatience of the internet — ‘give it to us immediately’ — drives so much, it’s hard to sort something like this out.”
BuzzFeed’s business model is built on that immediacy. Its newsroom is part of an organization whose mission is to find or create viral content. So you have serious journalism sitting almost side by side with lighthearted listicles like “28 Ryan Reynolds Tweets About Parenting That Will Make You Laugh Out Loud.”
BuzzFeed News has produced top-flight work. But in fashioning itself as a 21st-century upstart challenging the traditionalists, it has also pushed the limits.
It was the first to publish the collection of reports that were put together by the former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele during the 2016 presidential campaign. Known as the dossier, the 35-page file was filled with what were at least then-unsubstantiated (and salacious) reports about Mr. Trump said to have been collected by Russian agents for blackmail purposes. Other news organizations, including this one, had all or part of the dossier, but decided against publishing any of its contents they couldn’t independently verify.
The BuzzFeed News editor in chief, Ben Smith, argued that the dossier was worthy of release without full journalistic corroboration, partly because its contents had been shared with President Trump and others “at the highest…
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