All the President’s Journalists

Why has Bob Woodward yet again withheld important political information for his book?

Fearless reporting, a behind-the-curtains look at how journalism is made — and an unabashed point of view. Welcome to Chills.

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Is it ever okay for a journalist to sit on high-level intelligence? (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Bob Woodward has released another book. And, perhaps not surprisingly, Bob Woodward is under fire — yet again — for waiting to publish important information about Donald Trump.

Unlike the last time Woodward held back a presidential scoop — during the pandemic — the facts at issue here don’t appear to have immediate, direct life-or-death consequences. (More on that later.) Woodward writes in his new book, War, that a Trump aide revealed the former president has spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin as many as seven times since 2021, after Trump left office. He also says that Trump sent Putin precious Covid test kits at the height of the pandemic, even as Americans scrambled to get their own.

While it may be more complicated than the last time Woodward held back information to determine whether what he knew is critical to national security and/or the public, is it ever okay for a journalist to sit on such high-level intelligence? In this new case, information about what is undoubtably a consequential relationship between the former leader of the free world and the Russian autocrat? For the sake of a book?

Do Woodward and journalistic book authors in general have a public duty to release sensitive information they learn in the course of their reporting before their book publishes? (See similarly controversial decisions made by Maggie Haberman at The New York Times, and Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig at The Washington Post, among others, here.)

When Woodward previously did this, it was with his 2020 book, Rage, which contained a startling confession: Trump had told Woodward in February 2020 that he knew Covid-19 was deadly and spread through the air, even as he was telling the public not to worry, the disease would magically disappear. Most important, Woodward heard Trump say that Covid was “more deadly than even your strenuous flus,” proving the president knew very early that the nation was headed toward a pandemic — and did little to nothing to stop it. Instead, he admittedly “played down” the threat.

Upon publication of Rage, critics lambasted Woodward for not making this information public while as many as 200,000 people died from Covid in the U.S. between February and the book’s September pub date. Defenders, however, pointed out that everything that comes out of Trump’s mouth is subject to verification, hence it took time for the reporter to determine truth from fiction. They also explain that book authors develop sources in a way that is different from news reporters: The process allows people to speak more openly and in-depth when they are free of the pressure that comes with daily publishing.

According to the nonprofit Poynter Institute, Erik Wemple, the Washington Post’s media critic, tweeted at the time: “Woodward is a book author and the implicit understanding with his sources is that he’ll interview them, interview them again and again and again until he can stitch together something authoritative, in book form. That method explains how he gets officials and presidents to cooperate with him. If he were doing daily dispatches and attending all the White House briefings, he wouldn’t be getting 18 on-the-record interviews with President Trump.”

True, but was that worth it?

For his part, Woodward said that in addition to trying to verify the Covid-related things Trump told him, he also had to dig for a few months to find the source for the president’s information — and it took months to digest and organize into a bigger picture what he’d learned. Still, as Margaret Sullivan asked in The Washington Post: “But why not then write such a story later in the spring, once it was clear that the virus was extraordinarily destructive and that Trump’s early downplaying had almost certainly cost lives?”

Unclear.

Depending on the story being reported, there are arguments to be made on both sides when it comes to when to publish material. And we on the outside don’t always know all the mechanics involved in such decisions. Sometimes, we journalists know information that needs to become public knowledge but would ultimately interfere with justice or exacerbate a bad situation. I encountered such a scenario in my Congo reporting on little girls being raped. I had to choose between sitting on a story for The Guardian or publishing my scoop as soon as it was ready. In that case, I chose to wait for justice before publishing, although I did utilize my journalistic magic wand to speed that up.

When it comes to Trump, there have been so many words spilled on how the media has failed in its coverage. What has always been clear is that the Trump presidency is an altogether different kind of beast than the U.S. has ever known, and must be treated as such.

“Wemple and Woodward are making the mistake too many others in our industry have made and continue to make — treating this time as though it isn’t different, as though Donald Trump is just the 45^th president, when clearly he is unique in ways disturbing and unnerving,” wrote Isaac J. Bailey in Nieman Reports in 2020. “Woodward isn’t being criticized because he held onto a scoop, but because of the nature of the scoop. It was a matter of literal life or death.”

So now we come to Woodward’s latest revelations about Trump and Putin in his new book. Was withholding them worth it this time around?

When in the recent presidential debate Trump refused to say whether it was in the best interest of the U.S. for Ukraine to win the war against Russia, it would have been helpful to know that he’s been in touch repeatedly with Putin. Trump keeps saying he’d end the war between the two countries in 24 hours if he’s elected, which many analysts have interpreted to mean that any deal would entail Ukraine ceding swaths of territory to Russia.

“I think it’s in the U.S.’s best interest to get this war finished and just get it done, negotiate a deal,” Trump said at the debate, not giving away that it actually would be in his best interest to smooth the path with Putin. As for the rest of the world, there is in fact a strong argument to be made that any capitulation on Kyiv’s part will only lead to further global stratification, and with that, strife, aka it could bring us one step closer to world war.

It’s no secret that Trump loves Putin’s autocratic style, and it’s no secret that Putin has long worked to get Trump into office.

A report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence about the 2020 election found that Putin authorized “influence operations aimed at denigrating President Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party, supporting former President Trump, undermining public confidence in the electoral process and exacerbating sociopolitical divisions in the U.S.”

And it appears nothing has changed since then: Putin still wants Trump to win. Wouldn’t it help the public to know that the two men are still in cahoots behind the scenes? Even with Woodward’s delay tactics, I would think there is a political intention behind his book: Why else release it just before the election?

In a time of widespread mistrust of the media, I believe more transparency is the only route toward repairing a wounded profession. What Woodward did or didn’t do is done. What he can do now to repair trust is offer to explain the series of events and decisions that led him to wait until now to reveal something of great political magnitude.

The Fourth Estate is meant to be a check against disinformation and a force for the public good. In a time when journalism is under threat at home and around the world, oblique maneuvers like Woodward’s only invoke cynicism.

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