Trump May Have a ‘No Scalps’ Policy. But It Isn’t Consequence-Free.
month or so ago, I opened an edition of this newsletter by noting that the office of Pete Hegseth, the Fox News host turned defense secretary, had issued a memo announcing a crackdown on leaks, including by using polygraphs if necessary; the exact impetus for the memo wasn’t clear, but it followed on the heels of a New York Times story claiming that Elon Musk was set to receive a top-secret briefing about war plans with China. I led with the memo to highlight the stunning hypocrisy of what happened a few days later, when Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of The Atlantic, revealed that Michael Waltz, the national security adviser, had accidentally added him to a group chat on Signal, a privately owned messaging app, in which Hegseth shared highly sensitive plans for an in-progress strike on Yemen.
Related Knowledge Center: Democracy and politics
News organizations are scrambling to find a coverage approach that adequately informs the American public about the country’s slide from democracy to authoritarian rule.
Related Knowledge Center: The White House vs. the press
Whether it’s the Des Moines Register’s publication of an unfavorable election poll, a routine edit of a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, or the Associated Press’s decision in its authoritative stylebook to continue to use “Gulf of Mexico,” Donald Trump and the White House have used executive authority and legal reprisals in an effort to punish and suppress press coverage that runs contrary to the administration’s preferred narratives.
Democracy and politics | Signalgate | The CBS submission | Voiceless America
Related Knowledge Center: Digital privacy and data security
If you’re online, you’re generating a constant stream of information about yourself — sometimes voluntarily, sometimes unwittingly — that is assembled and used to craft your online experience. And generate wealth for data brokers. Meanwhile, designers and managers of the digital infrastructure on which the world depends are engaged in a never-ending effort to thwart attempts, by both criminal enterprises and state actors, to exploit vulnerabilities in those systems.
Signalgate | State surveillance
Related Knowledge Center: Signalgate
The inadvertent inclusion of the Atlantic editor on a Signal group chat sharing information about a pending U.S. military strike has created an uproar of accusations and denials. It’s also exposed a Pandora’s box of shoddy digital security practices within the Trump administration
The White House vs. the press | Digital privacy and data security