Letter to Bill Grueskin, former Dean of the Columbia Journalism School, on his recent article in the Columbia Journalism Review
Mr. Grueskin,
Regarding your August 1 article, “Knowing: Still Only Half the Battle,” which lauds Charlie Savage of the New York Times for having “dissected and eviscerated” Director of Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s claims about corruption of intelligence in the Trump-Russia investigation:
You praised Savage’s article, “New Reports on Russian Interference Don’t Show What Trump Says They Do,” as an example of the work of an “experienced beat reporter” who can distill complex stories into a “coherent, compelling whole.” Your sub-headline stressed the importance of “showing receipts” in journalism, where “most people don’t follow stories very closely,” but “they can learn a lot when an experienced beat reporter helps them sort out what’s important and what’s chaff.”
Except — and you should know this because the Columbia Journalism Review published over 20,000 words on the subject in January 2023 — Savage and his colleagues at the Times have badly miscovered this story for nearly a decade, and continue to do so. The 2018 Pulitzer Prize the paper won on the topic along with the Washington Post will go down as the same kind of “disgrace” as its 1932 Pulitzer for Walter Duranty’s breathless coverage of Stalin’s Russia. In this case, the Times drifted so far from its traditional mission that it became an animating motive for Gabbard and other investigators in Donald Trump’s administration.
Witness FBI Director Kash Patel throwing down a gauntlet this weekend, right after your piece ran. He challenged media figures who called him a “liar” in 2018, when as an investigator in the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) chaired by California’s Devin Nunes, he outed the Steele Dossier as “fictitious intelligence” used to deceive a federal judge and unlawfully spy on Trump’s campaign. Patel added, “Now I’m the FBI Director,” then hinted that he might release “more docs” so “we can see who is lying,” before ending with a reference to “bogus Pulitzers.”