WEBVTT - The Journalist and the Firefighter 0:00:00.960 --> 0:00:03.020 So I've been looking back at old episodes of our show, 0:00:03.320 --> 0:00:05.420 which still feels like a new show to me. So 0:00:05.440 --> 0:00:07.240 it's weird to even say that we have old episodes, 0:00:07.320 --> 0:00:10.690 but we're about to have been at it for two years, amazingly. 0:00:11.369 --> 0:00:14.530 And it's cool sometimes, especially if you're relatively new around here. 0:00:14.550 --> 0:00:16.110 We do have a lot of new people in our 0:00:16.150 --> 0:00:19.590 audience to listen back to where we started. So today, 0:00:19.910 --> 0:00:21.530 while a bunch of people on our team are taking 0:00:21.670 --> 0:00:25.610 well-deserved vacations, myself included, I wanted to share one of 0:00:25.650 --> 0:00:29.710 our very first episodes, which first ran in September of 2024. 0:00:29.710 --> 0:00:33.190 about a super serious journalist who had come to question 0:00:33.550 --> 0:00:36.330 his whole career, which sent me into some questioning too. 0:00:37.270 --> 0:00:39.030 Try to put yourself back in that headspace if you can. 0:00:39.530 --> 0:00:43.489 Americans had not yet reelected Donald Trump. Kamala Harris was 0:00:43.510 --> 0:00:46.450 in the midst of her super fast campaign after that 0:00:46.490 --> 0:00:49.170 intense summer where Joe Biden withdrew from the race and 0:00:49.450 --> 0:00:51.870 Donald Trump had been shot at on stage in Pennsylvania 0:00:52.300 --> 0:00:54.800 and none of us knew what would happen next. Our 0:00:54.840 --> 0:00:58.100 show hadn't even started using that glitchy sounding sonic button 0:00:58.120 --> 0:01:00.660 we now play before each episode. But I get to 0:01:00.720 --> 0:01:10.089 add it in here, retroactively now. Enjoy the episode. Before 0:01:10.110 --> 0:01:13.630 the last presidential election in 2020, a reporter wrote a 0:01:13.650 --> 0:01:16.850 story that predicted the future. I remember reading it. It 0:01:16.870 --> 0:01:18.810 was one of those pieces of journalism I'll never forget. 0:01:18.830 --> 0:01:21.230 Though it's hard to put myself back into that moment 0:01:21.270 --> 0:01:24.339 in time, into that headspace, when the frightening things the 0:01:24.380 --> 0:01:27.380 reporter was saying were about to happen hadn't happened yet. 0:01:28.020 --> 0:01:30.370 And I still had to wonder. Is this guy right? 0:01:31.450 --> 0:01:35.230 Will the things his story is predicting become true? But 0:01:35.270 --> 0:01:35.550 he was. 0:01:36.450 --> 0:01:36.850 And they did. 0:01:39.510 --> 0:01:42.380 The reporter's name was Barton Gelman. In his story for 0:01:42.390 --> 0:01:45.140 The Atlantic, he laid out ahead of time the specific 0:01:45.200 --> 0:01:48.460 tactics then-President Donald Trump and his allies would use to 0:01:48.480 --> 0:01:50.900 attempt to stay in power, regardless of the outcome of 0:01:50.920 --> 0:01:53.380 the election. The story was called The Election That Could 0:01:53.400 --> 0:01:58.250 Break America. Barton Gellman predicted that Trump would never concede defeat. 0:01:58.770 --> 0:02:02.690 He identified January 6th, 2021 specifically as a date that 0:02:02.710 --> 0:02:05.930 could see chaos. He reported ahead of time that there 0:02:05.950 --> 0:02:08.810 would likely be immense pressure on Vice President Mike Pence 0:02:09.090 --> 0:02:13.260 to not certify the electoral vote. Barton wrote all this 0:02:13.400 --> 0:02:16.920 in September 2020, a full month and a half before 0:02:16.960 --> 0:02:20.419 Election Day, before Trump stepped out on that election night 0:02:20.460 --> 0:02:23.929 at the White House and delivered a speech saying, insisting 0:02:23.950 --> 0:02:25.530 the election had been stolen from him. 0:02:26.070 --> 0:02:28.519 All of us here today do not want to see 0:02:28.639 --> 0:02:30.480 our election victory stolen. 0:02:30.800 --> 0:02:33.260 We will stop the steal. 0:02:36.100 --> 0:02:43.450 Before the insurrection on January 6th. Before Trump supporters gathered 0:02:43.490 --> 0:02:46.890 around a noose on the Capitol lawn that day and shouted, 0:02:46.950 --> 0:02:53.240 hang Mike Pence. I didn't know Barton Gellman's name when 0:02:53.260 --> 0:02:55.500 I read this piece, but I realized when I looked 0:02:55.520 --> 0:02:57.980 him up that I definitely knew his work. He was 0:02:58.020 --> 0:03:00.560 the reporter who brought us the huge Edward Snowden leak 0:03:00.940 --> 0:03:03.859 via the Washington Post, which revealed for the first time 0:03:04.160 --> 0:03:08.540 the National Security Agency's vast surveillance of American citizens. For sure, 0:03:08.560 --> 0:03:10.609 one of the biggest stories of the last few decades. 0:03:11.650 --> 0:03:14.950 Barton's won three Pulitzer Prizes. Over 30 years of reporting, 0:03:14.990 --> 0:03:17.889 he's covered the Pentagon and 9-11 and the War on Terror. 0:03:18.470 --> 0:03:21.660 He traveled with weapon hunters in Iraq and and documented, 0:03:22.040 --> 0:03:24.239 at a time when many others were not, that they 0:03:24.300 --> 0:03:27.480 weren't finding weapons of mass destruction. He's the kind of 0:03:27.500 --> 0:03:30.950 journalist who moderates panels with former secretaries of Homeland Security. 0:03:31.550 --> 0:03:34.270 On his website, he lists five different methods for sending 0:03:34.290 --> 0:03:38.850 him confidential material securely. When his Atlantic story came out, 0:03:39.430 --> 0:03:42.070 the chatter among journalism types online was all, Bart Gellman 0:03:42.090 --> 0:03:44.530 wrote a piece. Ooh, Bart Gellman wrote a piece. Like 0:03:44.570 --> 0:03:46.960 he was a high priest of journalism, sending down a 0:03:47.000 --> 0:03:50.350 proclamation about the state of our country. So I was 0:03:50.430 --> 0:03:54.030 startled and intrigued when I read something new Barton Gelman 0:03:54.060 --> 0:03:56.880 wrote at the beginning of this year. It was a 0:03:56.920 --> 0:04:00.020 tweet in which he announced that after more than three decades, 0:04:00.900 --> 0:04:05.900 he was quitting journalism. It was time, Barton wrote, to 0:04:05.940 --> 0:04:11.080 get off the sidelines and join the fight for democracy. Apparently, 0:04:11.620 --> 0:04:14.370 Barton Gelman felt he couldn't do enough as a journalist 0:04:14.570 --> 0:04:16.930 to help our country to make enough of a difference. 0:04:18.370 --> 0:04:21.349 This feeling was that journalism is too passive, that it's 0:04:21.450 --> 0:04:24.330 failing to meet the moment. I've been wrestling with that myself, 0:04:24.950 --> 0:04:28.570 but I don't want to quit the profession that I love. Instead, 0:04:28.690 --> 0:04:30.760 this grappling became a big part of the impetus for 0:04:30.779 --> 0:04:33.640 this show, where I'm questioning the ways we do journalism 0:04:33.660 --> 0:04:36.440 and trying to figure out how can it change, if 0:04:36.480 --> 0:04:40.020 it can change, to be more impactful. Some of this 0:04:40.040 --> 0:04:42.339 came out a few mint juleps deep in our last episode, 0:04:42.380 --> 0:04:45.190 Drinks for Five. Astead Herndon at The New York Times 0:04:45.310 --> 0:04:48.520 and my mentor from This American Life, Ira Glass, were 0:04:48.540 --> 0:04:50.820 talking about their feeling that the job of a journalist 0:04:51.200 --> 0:04:54.100 should be to document the world, not necessarily to try 0:04:54.140 --> 0:04:57.220 to influence it. And I said, you talking about like 0:04:57.820 --> 0:04:59.990 journalism's role being to reflect reality or just kind of 0:05:00.020 --> 0:05:02.110 document that's the best we can do. I believe that 0:05:02.150 --> 0:05:04.750 for a long time and I've been in this zone 0:05:04.770 --> 0:05:08.740 of just feeling like it doesn't feel like enough. That's 0:05:08.779 --> 0:05:10.820 kind of the spirit of this. It's just like, there's 0:05:10.839 --> 0:05:14.440 something like that felt like enough for so long. And like, yeah, 0:05:14.600 --> 0:05:17.120 that that was our role and our purpose. And, and 0:05:17.180 --> 0:05:19.840 there's something about it that I just hit a point 0:05:19.880 --> 0:05:25.920 where like, it feels insufficient. Even though this sentiment has 0:05:25.940 --> 0:05:28.280 been growing in me for years now, I still feel 0:05:28.339 --> 0:05:31.390 stuck or at least much more comfortable in the observe 0:05:31.410 --> 0:05:34.440 and document approach I'm used to. It's a conflict for me. 0:05:35.640 --> 0:05:38.570 When I read Barton Gelman's tweet, I imagined that he 0:05:38.610 --> 0:05:41.030 felt similar to me. But from afar, at least, it 0:05:41.070 --> 0:05:43.130 appeared that he'd chosen a different route to deal with 0:05:43.170 --> 0:05:46.989 his frustrations. Apparently, he decided that continuing to do journalism 0:05:47.050 --> 0:05:49.349 wasn't the way, that in order to have the impact 0:05:49.370 --> 0:05:51.860 he wanted, he was better off freeing himself from the 0:05:51.890 --> 0:05:55.820 field entirely rather than trying to change it. I look 0:05:55.860 --> 0:05:58.920 up to Barton, aspire to do work like him. So 0:05:59.000 --> 0:06:02.600 I needed to know what led Barton Gelman to quit journalism. 0:06:03.240 --> 0:06:06.160 What's he doing now? And what does that say about 0:06:06.200 --> 0:06:08.400 the limits of the work we do? He told me 0:06:08.440 --> 0:06:16.359 something that I did not expect. From KCRW and Placement Theory, 0:06:16.800 --> 0:06:27.690 I'm Brian Reed. This is Question Everything. Stick around. When 0:06:27.700 --> 0:06:30.370 Barton Gelman quit journalism in January, he went to work 0:06:30.410 --> 0:06:33.210 in an organization whose research he'd cited in his articles 0:06:33.250 --> 0:06:36.510 over the years. the Brennan Center for Justice. It's a 0:06:36.550 --> 0:06:41.070 nonpartisan nonprofit whose mission is, quote, to reform, revitalize, and 0:06:41.110 --> 0:06:45.190 when necessary, defend our country's systems of democracy and justice. 0:06:46.110 --> 0:06:48.409 They filed briefs in support of the Voting Rights Act 0:06:48.450 --> 0:06:50.970 when it's been challenged. They advocate for reforms on the 0:06:51.010 --> 0:06:55.670 Supreme Court, like term limits for justices. They've represented Guantanamo detainees. 0:06:56.550 --> 0:06:58.190 That's where I went to meet Barton to find out 0:06:58.230 --> 0:07:00.910 how he came to make this remarkable career move, at 0:07:00.930 --> 0:07:02.790 the Brennan Center offices in New York. 0:07:03.640 --> 0:07:07.460 It's a think tank. It's kind of a policy advocacy shop. 0:07:07.700 --> 0:07:11.790 They do litigation and they do very good. Right. 0:07:11.850 --> 0:07:13.650 It's a we now, right? You work here now. 0:07:14.610 --> 0:07:18.130 Yeah. You know, I'm still getting used to that. Yeah. 0:07:18.310 --> 0:07:20.310 To the we, to the saying like we do litigation 0:07:20.350 --> 0:07:22.750 and we advocate for policy. That still feels a little 0:07:23.590 --> 0:07:24.590 unnatural for you to say. 0:07:25.770 --> 0:07:28.380 You know, I've always been trained to kind of keep 0:07:28.420 --> 0:07:32.440 myself out of the story as a journalist. to be 0:07:32.460 --> 0:07:36.160 standing back and reporting on what other people do. So 0:07:36.420 --> 0:07:39.060 I'm still not as used to the first person. 0:07:39.720 --> 0:07:41.420 Well, thank you for doing this. I know you're very busy. 0:07:41.720 --> 0:07:43.720 You know, just seeing your tweet, just being an admirer 0:07:43.740 --> 0:07:47.160 of your work, I have kind of watched what you've 0:07:47.180 --> 0:07:49.820 done in the last year, and it strikes me as extraordinary, 0:07:49.900 --> 0:07:52.400 someone with your track record and just your experience as 0:07:52.440 --> 0:07:54.930 a journalist, to feel that you had to leave the 0:07:54.970 --> 0:07:56.790 field to really have the impact that you want to 0:07:56.830 --> 0:07:59.650 have right now. Can you point to when this feeling 0:07:59.850 --> 0:08:01.070 that you wanted to leave. 0:08:02.790 --> 0:08:05.180 Or that you had to leave in order to take 0:08:05.270 --> 0:08:07.540 the action that you wanted to take started to bubble 0:08:07.580 --> 0:08:07.960 up for you? 0:08:13.060 --> 0:08:18.560 Well, I mean, I have written about a lot of 0:08:19.080 --> 0:08:24.190 bad and scary things over my career. And every now 0:08:24.250 --> 0:08:28.770 and then I've felt like I shouldn't just be a spectator. 0:08:29.490 --> 0:08:32.030 Maybe I should try to get involved and try to help. 0:08:32.929 --> 0:08:37.209 I was and I'm still convinced that doing the right 0:08:37.250 --> 0:08:44.320 kind of journalism is constructive and valuable. But this time 0:08:44.360 --> 0:08:47.679 just felt a little bit different for me as a citizen. 0:08:48.040 --> 0:08:53.760 There's a threat that we'll no longer have the power 0:08:54.179 --> 0:09:00.430 to decide who governs us or to ensure that The 0:09:00.490 --> 0:09:05.370 rule of law is upheld to ensure that constitutional rights 0:09:05.450 --> 0:09:09.570 are upheld. There is way too much support for sort 0:09:09.970 --> 0:09:14.790 of dictatorial powers in the hands of one candidate or 0:09:14.950 --> 0:09:19.510 one president. And I felt like at this time, the 0:09:19.550 --> 0:09:24.380 most important thing I could be doing was to deliberately 0:09:24.480 --> 0:09:30.140 try to influence events. And that is not quite kosher. 0:09:30.559 --> 0:09:31.160 For a journalist. 0:09:32.120 --> 0:09:33.720 And when did you start getting that inkling that you 0:09:33.740 --> 0:09:36.040 wanted to do that? Like more recently, like, you know, 0:09:36.059 --> 0:09:37.800 in the last four years, do you remember when it 0:09:37.840 --> 0:09:39.780 started to occur to you that maybe this is where 0:09:39.800 --> 0:09:40.260 I'm going to head? 0:09:40.440 --> 0:09:43.140 So I did a cover story for the Atlantic a 0:09:43.179 --> 0:09:46.460 few months before the election in 2020. 0:09:46.460 --> 0:09:48.900 And it was called The Election That Could Break America. 0:09:49.240 --> 0:09:50.210 A very memorable story. 0:09:51.260 --> 0:09:55.870 It got attention. I felt like I'd had some impact. 0:09:55.910 --> 0:09:58.230 I felt like I'd issued a warning and it did 0:09:58.690 --> 0:10:02.890 motivate people and institutions. I felt like I did my job. 0:10:03.950 --> 0:10:04.430 But then a. 0:10:04.830 --> 0:10:07.650 Year later, I wrote another cover story. It was called 0:10:07.910 --> 0:10:10.910 January 6th was just practice. 0:10:12.179 --> 0:10:15.699 In this story, Barton investigated Republican efforts to seize power 0:10:15.780 --> 0:10:19.309 regardless of the vote in the 2024 presidential election. the 0:10:19.350 --> 0:10:21.750 election we're in the middle of right now. He looked 0:10:21.770 --> 0:10:25.130 at how Republicans have been preparing legal theories to swap 0:10:25.250 --> 0:10:29.790 in Trump-friendly electors, replacing officials on election boards state by state, 0:10:30.410 --> 0:10:33.179 pushing bills that would give them more control over vote tallying. 0:10:34.559 --> 0:10:36.660 While he was reporting on this, Barton went to a 0:10:36.720 --> 0:10:39.760 protest in D.C. in support of people being held on 0:10:39.800 --> 0:10:44.859 criminal charges after invading the Capitol on January 6th. It 0:10:44.900 --> 0:10:47.000 was here that he met the person who had set 0:10:47.040 --> 0:10:49.660 him on a new life path, A New Yorker who 0:10:49.710 --> 0:10:51.760 Barton ended up profiling in the cover story. 0:10:53.110 --> 0:10:55.970 I picked a guy out of the crowd. He was 0:10:55.990 --> 0:11:01.809 a tall man wearing a New York firefighter's uniform. And 0:11:01.970 --> 0:11:04.970 other people sort of seemed to be deferring to him 0:11:05.010 --> 0:11:07.870 and listening to him. So I struck up a conversation 0:11:07.890 --> 0:11:13.959 and he was a very pleasant guy and open to conversation. 0:11:15.350 --> 0:11:17.530 which is always true if you go to one of 0:11:17.570 --> 0:11:23.200 those mega events. And I ended up talking to him 0:11:23.480 --> 0:11:27.380 for probably 12 hours over a period of days. 0:11:29.120 --> 0:11:29.840 Richard Patterson. 0:11:30.920 --> 0:11:34.880 I just tried to probe him in ways that were 0:11:34.920 --> 0:11:38.320 consistent with my journalistic methods over the years. Like if 0:11:38.400 --> 0:11:44.160 I could just actually examine a belief and produce evidence, 0:11:44.559 --> 0:11:48.440 maybe I could change minds. Maybe we could come to 0:11:48.480 --> 0:11:51.400 a common understanding of the truth. You know, he would 0:11:51.450 --> 0:11:55.050 give me some election statistics and say, I don't know, 0:11:55.230 --> 0:11:58.550 there were more votes for Biden in Pennsylvania than there 0:11:58.590 --> 0:11:59.950 were registered voters. 0:12:00.610 --> 0:12:01.890 So obviously there was fraud. 0:12:03.750 --> 0:12:05.630 And so I went out and did a little research 0:12:05.770 --> 0:12:09.250 on that and figured out what the origin of that 0:12:09.380 --> 0:12:13.350 claim was. You know, I said that originated in this 0:12:13.570 --> 0:12:17.880 tweet by a person who conflated two different categories of numbers. 0:12:18.420 --> 0:12:21.440 So this number came from this source and that number 0:12:21.500 --> 0:12:23.600 came from that source and it's apples and oranges. 0:12:23.660 --> 0:12:24.859 So it's actually not true. 0:12:24.920 --> 0:12:26.840 And you sent them the sources, the underlying sources. 0:12:27.059 --> 0:12:29.710 And I said, uh, I sent them to him and 0:12:29.750 --> 0:12:31.730 I also talked to him about it on the phone. 0:12:31.750 --> 0:12:34.069 And this was after the demonstration. 0:12:35.370 --> 0:12:39.670 And that was like a complete failure. Uh, it just, 0:12:40.309 --> 0:12:44.520 you know, uh, it just glanced off him. He didn't 0:12:44.740 --> 0:12:48.780 engage with it because, I don't know, cognitive dissonancy, you know, 0:12:48.800 --> 0:12:51.880 he was convinced of something. And so if that evidence 0:12:51.900 --> 0:12:54.530 was there, but he just, he's just switched immediately to 0:12:54.910 --> 0:12:55.310 another one. 0:12:56.390 --> 0:12:57.449 And was that surprising to you? 0:12:59.390 --> 0:13:00.690 I mean, I kind of, I. 0:13:00.670 --> 0:13:06.729 Was generically aware that people did this, but I, I 0:13:06.770 --> 0:13:10.970 guess I imagined that the cure had not been administered 0:13:11.110 --> 0:13:15.190 properly and that if I only just kind of persuaded 0:13:15.210 --> 0:13:17.170 someone to kind of engage with facts. 0:13:17.630 --> 0:13:20.910 That they might go, oh, that's not what I thought. 0:13:21.309 --> 0:13:25.510 That's different. Maybe I was mistaken. 0:13:25.530 --> 0:13:30.550 I mean, so it really did kind of undermine my 0:13:30.730 --> 0:13:33.530 faith in what I do for a living. 0:13:33.290 --> 0:13:33.930 As a journalist. 0:13:34.750 --> 0:13:37.550 That experience with Richard Patterson, the firefighter. 0:13:37.710 --> 0:13:37.950 Yeah. 0:13:40.559 --> 0:13:43.670 Barton didn't give up. Richard Patterson kept presenting him with 0:13:43.750 --> 0:13:46.350 more stories and theories, and Barton kept running them to 0:13:46.370 --> 0:13:48.890 the ground. Like, there was a man who broke into 0:13:48.929 --> 0:13:52.170 Nancy Pelosi's office at the Capitol on January 6th and 0:13:52.230 --> 0:13:55.860 stole a computer. Patterson told Barton that he believed that 0:13:55.920 --> 0:13:58.920 man was actually a member of Antifa, the left-wing group, 0:13:59.700 --> 0:14:01.260 masquerading as a Trump supporter. 0:14:02.080 --> 0:14:05.160 And I said, how do you know that? Why do 0:14:05.179 --> 0:14:10.960 you think that? And this one, uh, He was able 0:14:11.059 --> 0:14:17.660 to pinpoint, he named a retired general who had explained 0:14:18.179 --> 0:14:21.790 that this was the truth in a Rumble video that 0:14:21.810 --> 0:14:22.210 he had seen. 0:14:22.470 --> 0:14:24.390 Rumble's like an online platform, basically. 0:14:24.410 --> 0:14:24.870 Rumble, yeah. 0:14:24.990 --> 0:14:28.570 It's the kind of right-wing YouTube. And so I went 0:14:28.590 --> 0:14:32.770 and found the video. And then I interviewed the general. 0:14:33.180 --> 0:14:36.340 I tracked him down and asked him how he knew. 0:14:36.820 --> 0:14:39.580 How he knew that it was Antifa masquerading as. 0:14:39.960 --> 0:14:44.330 Right. Actually, his view was it was Antifa working alongside U.S. 0:14:45.010 --> 0:14:50.250 special forces from the deep state who had actually, on 0:14:50.290 --> 0:14:54.810 January 6th, broken into Nancy Pelosi's office and stolen her computer. 0:14:56.200 --> 0:15:01.060 And he said that he had a source who he 0:15:01.120 --> 0:15:04.040 wouldn't name to me who had been a witness on 0:15:04.080 --> 0:15:09.700 the ground who had said, Those guys looked like special forces. 0:15:10.380 --> 0:15:14.350 And as they were leaving the capital, they had bulges 0:15:14.590 --> 0:15:18.550 under their coats that were sort of rectangular. And they 0:15:19.130 --> 0:15:22.330 looked like they could be laptops. That was the evidence. 0:15:23.410 --> 0:15:23.710 Okay. 0:15:23.830 --> 0:15:28.670 Which is, I hope your listeners will agree, comically inadequate. 0:15:29.160 --> 0:15:33.420 for claiming that it's Antifa backed by special forces, rectangular bulge, 0:15:33.480 --> 0:15:34.940 and that he knew that they were the ones who 0:15:34.980 --> 0:15:37.240 had gone into Nancy Pelosi's office and stolen her. 0:15:37.280 --> 0:15:38.900 And he had nothing more than that, obviously. 0:15:38.920 --> 0:15:39.480 That's all he had. 0:15:39.500 --> 0:15:39.700 Yeah. 0:15:40.260 --> 0:15:40.570 Okay. 0:15:40.870 --> 0:15:43.770 And then I got a call back from this general's 0:15:43.930 --> 0:15:47.590 son who said, I heard you talk to my father. 0:15:48.110 --> 0:15:48.910 And I said, yeah. 0:15:49.050 --> 0:15:52.370 He said, I really wish you wouldn't use that interview. 0:15:52.470 --> 0:15:56.340 My father has dementia. And we're trying to get him 0:15:56.380 --> 0:15:58.180 to stop talking about this stuff in public. 0:15:59.520 --> 0:16:02.360 So, I mean, that was the evidence. The evidence was, you. 0:16:02.320 --> 0:16:05.540 Know, a preposterous story by a guy with dementia. But 0:16:05.580 --> 0:16:09.550 he had convinced probably a lot of people, including my firefighter, 0:16:09.570 --> 0:16:10.510 Richard Patterson. 0:16:11.490 --> 0:16:14.530 And then did you go talk to Richard Patterson about this? 0:16:14.550 --> 0:16:16.690 And I told him the whole conversation. I didn't write 0:16:16.790 --> 0:16:18.990 all of it because it was very personal and, you know, 0:16:19.010 --> 0:16:24.140 a guy talking about his father's decline. But I told 0:16:24.200 --> 0:16:28.800 it all to the firefighter and he said, You know, 0:16:28.840 --> 0:16:30.960 this general's a patriot. I believe him more than I 0:16:31.000 --> 0:16:44.360 believe the FBI. It just, I mean, no impact. There's 0:16:44.380 --> 0:16:46.800 a little bit of a crisis of confidence. I'm not 0:16:46.840 --> 0:16:49.560 saying I've lost all belief in the importance of journalism. 0:16:49.660 --> 0:16:50.100 I haven't. 0:16:50.720 --> 0:16:53.880 But it started to feel like that was not the 0:16:53.980 --> 0:17:00.500 most powerful tool available to try to protect democracy at 0:17:00.540 --> 0:17:01.720 a time when it's under threat. 0:17:02.300 --> 0:17:02.780 It's interesting. 0:17:02.800 --> 0:17:05.510 It's like you got a firsthand experience of what it 0:17:05.570 --> 0:17:08.430 means to put reporting out into the world. Like normally 0:17:08.450 --> 0:17:11.050 you're reporting something and you're publishing it and there's a 0:17:11.070 --> 0:17:13.390 bit of a distance between you as the journalist and 0:17:13.790 --> 0:17:17.040 the readers. You don't totally know how the findings or 0:17:17.060 --> 0:17:19.280 the facts are resonating in people's minds, what they're making 0:17:19.340 --> 0:17:21.320 of them. And here you had a very kind of 0:17:21.380 --> 0:17:25.650 acute experience face to face with someone. Where you did reporting, 0:17:26.030 --> 0:17:29.750 showed it to them, and it was completely useless. 0:17:31.300 --> 0:17:34.040 Yeah, it wasn't just that I was putting it– well, 0:17:34.060 --> 0:17:37.159 first of all, you're right. You tend to get feedback 0:17:37.800 --> 0:17:42.459 from strong partisans. So you get angry, trollish kinds of 0:17:43.040 --> 0:17:45.900 emails and phone calls from one group. And you get, 0:17:46.600 --> 0:17:51.260 thank God for you, that great story, what can I 0:17:51.380 --> 0:17:56.030 do kind of emails from someone else. But you don't 0:17:56.270 --> 0:18:02.060 get reactions from very many average readers. Here, I was 0:18:02.119 --> 0:18:03.639 not only putting it out in the world, but I 0:18:03.680 --> 0:18:09.109 was interactively explaining it to someone and iteratively going through, 0:18:09.160 --> 0:18:12.710 you know, so why do you think this? And now 0:18:12.930 --> 0:18:17.530 here's the documentation. And what's your next point? And we 0:18:17.550 --> 0:18:18.990 went back and forth and back and forth. And at 0:18:19.010 --> 0:18:25.649 the end of it, he was just absolutely unchanged. And 0:18:25.730 --> 0:18:32.550 it just made me wonder, what's the value of doing 0:18:32.570 --> 0:18:33.109 what I'm doing? 0:18:38.690 --> 0:18:42.770 Documenting reality no longer felt like enough. Part of the 0:18:42.790 --> 0:18:45.310 problem is that even in the best of circumstances, it 0:18:45.369 --> 0:18:50.710 is so much work to document reality truthfully. An aging 0:18:50.750 --> 0:18:52.950 general can casually spit out something untrue. 0:18:53.510 --> 0:18:55.369 They took Pelosi's. 0:18:57.010 --> 0:18:59.149 People post it with almost no effort or thought. 0:18:59.930 --> 0:19:02.490 There were some people in there that were special forces 0:19:03.100 --> 0:19:06.080 mixed with Antifa, and they took her laptop. 0:19:06.440 --> 0:19:08.600 And now, if Barton wants to say something true about 0:19:08.619 --> 0:19:11.300 this as a journalist, he has to dig up this video, 0:19:11.400 --> 0:19:14.260 track down the general's phone number, prep his questions, call 0:19:14.300 --> 0:19:15.940 the general. He has to get him to agree to 0:19:16.000 --> 0:19:17.840 talk to him. Then he has to take the call 0:19:17.859 --> 0:19:20.640 from his son. He has to comfort him, evaluate what's 0:19:20.680 --> 0:19:22.659 ethical to report or not. He has to figure out 0:19:22.680 --> 0:19:24.020 how to write it in a way that makes people 0:19:24.080 --> 0:19:26.920 care and helps them understand why it's important. To help 0:19:26.960 --> 0:19:29.639 him do all this, the Atlantic Magazine pays an editor, 0:19:29.900 --> 0:19:32.290 probably a few, a team of fact-checkers to make sure 0:19:32.310 --> 0:19:35.169 he didn't miss anything, lawyers to review it. They put 0:19:35.190 --> 0:19:37.590 the story online and distribute and market it so the 0:19:37.630 --> 0:19:39.890 facts Barton ferreted out actually get in front of you, 0:19:40.210 --> 0:19:44.609 in front of us, people. Even after all that, you 0:19:44.650 --> 0:19:48.150 can't ever really unstir the creamer from the coffee. You 0:19:48.170 --> 0:19:51.680 have to simply report the creamer. is spoiled and hope 0:19:51.700 --> 0:19:53.960 people listen to you and decide not to take a sip. 0:19:55.420 --> 0:19:57.340 But what I think many of us have experienced in 0:19:57.359 --> 0:20:00.180 the last seven or eight years and what Barton experienced 0:20:00.200 --> 0:20:03.000 with Richard Patterson is that people are drinking the spoiled 0:20:03.040 --> 0:20:06.619 cream anyway. They trust the dairy brand more than they 0:20:06.640 --> 0:20:09.990 trust the journalists saying it's rotten. This is the thing 0:20:10.010 --> 0:20:12.889 that's so existentially troubling to me and to lots of 0:20:12.930 --> 0:20:16.389 journalists I know, and apparently also to our high priest, 0:20:16.930 --> 0:20:17.450 Barton Gelman. 0:20:18.630 --> 0:20:24.520 I had a growing loss of confidence in the way 0:20:25.080 --> 0:20:28.900 I had looked at my journalistic role over the years. 0:20:29.580 --> 0:20:33.199 I mean, I always felt like I was aiming in 0:20:33.260 --> 0:20:39.970 my stories for someone, for an audience that wanted to 0:20:40.030 --> 0:20:45.419 know what's true and that if I found interesting things 0:20:45.600 --> 0:20:48.320 that were not already in the public record, if I 0:20:48.359 --> 0:20:51.120 kind of dug in and found something important was happening 0:20:51.160 --> 0:20:53.500 and I showed my work and I displayed my evidence, 0:20:53.960 --> 0:20:57.179 that there were lots of people who were open to 0:20:57.240 --> 0:21:00.330 be convinced about what's true in the world. 0:21:00.750 --> 0:21:01.010 And the. 0:21:03.250 --> 0:21:08.770 Super amplified polarization of our sort of politics and media 0:21:09.130 --> 0:21:15.450 and the kind of epistemological crisis that we're in where 0:21:16.650 --> 0:21:21.129 it's harder and harder to find any common understanding of 0:21:21.170 --> 0:21:26.060 the truth was making my work, you know, I wouldn't 0:21:26.380 --> 0:21:31.080 go nearly as far as saying irrelevant, but less impactful. 0:21:31.820 --> 0:21:35.220 I wondered if I was just writing for the already convinced. 0:21:37.380 --> 0:21:43.580 How many people who think that Biden defrauded his way 0:21:43.700 --> 0:21:49.300 to the 2020 election victory are reading The Atlantic? It 0:21:49.720 --> 0:21:53.500 started feeling to me like my job was not. 0:21:54.680 --> 0:21:57.920 Adequate to our times. My view that. 0:21:59.930 --> 0:22:03.340 Truth is sort of an elemental value that needs to 0:22:03.380 --> 0:22:05.879 be served by, you know, careful sifting of evidence. 0:22:07.859 --> 0:22:08.879 It just might not be. 0:22:08.840 --> 0:22:11.960 As important as it seemed to me it was earlier 0:22:11.980 --> 0:22:12.800 in my career. 0:22:14.600 --> 0:22:17.240 I was stunned, frankly, to hear Barton's thinking about this. 0:22:18.200 --> 0:22:20.860 I wasn't surprised that he'd encountered people who dismissed facts 0:22:20.980 --> 0:22:23.850 and that he was disturbed by that. What shocked me 0:22:24.290 --> 0:22:27.689 is the conclusion he came to after that experience. that 0:22:27.710 --> 0:22:31.010 this lifelong journalist's response to our country's turn away from 0:22:31.030 --> 0:22:34.510 the truth has been to say, maybe truth is a 0:22:34.570 --> 0:22:38.169 battleground I should cede. Maybe, if my goal is to 0:22:38.210 --> 0:22:42.629 protect democracy, there are more important battles to fight. I've 0:22:42.650 --> 0:22:45.040 heard plenty of journalists talk about their own crises of 0:22:45.080 --> 0:22:48.040 confidence in our work. I mean, even Ira, over drinks. 0:22:48.980 --> 0:22:51.899 You know, like, I came into journalism feeling like, oh, 0:22:52.160 --> 0:22:55.320 if you sort of lay out a case with facts 0:22:56.930 --> 0:23:00.790 information that's true, like you could persuade people and that 0:23:00.830 --> 0:23:04.950 would change something. And I feel like what I've seen 0:23:05.030 --> 0:23:06.109 is that's not true. 0:23:07.770 --> 0:23:10.020 But I don't think I've heard any other journalists say 0:23:10.150 --> 0:23:13.229 what Barton seemed to be saying, that maybe fighting for 0:23:13.260 --> 0:23:17.080