“IT WAS THE LAZIEST REPORTING I’VE EVER DONE”

Versão em Português

Translated by Isa Mara Lando

While driving to the supermarket on a Saturday morning at around 11 a.m., journalist Jeffrey Goldberg was mistakenly added to a Signal messaging group. In the group were senior figures from Donald Trump’s administration, including Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Michael Waltz, who at the time was National Security Adviser. They were discussing plans for imminent military strikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen.

“I looked at the messages and couldn’t believe my eyes,” said Goldberg, who has served as editor-in-chief of The Atlantic since 2016.

He was interviewed on Sunday, September 6th,  by Daniel Bergamasco, executive editor of piauí, and Flavia Lima, special correspondent for Folha de S.Paulo, in the closing session of the piauí Journalism Festival. The event, which reached its tenth edition this year, was held at the Cinemateca Brasileira in São Paulo under the main theme In the Eye of the Storm: 

Newsroom Directors in Times Of Turmoil. The festival brought together eight journalists from seven countries to discuss their experience of leading major news organizations during incandescent moments in the news cycle.

As soon as he read the messages, Goldberg contacted editors and lawyers at The Atlantic. “It seemed too stupid to be true.” His strategy was to wait and see whether the attacks would actually take place. Two hours after being added to the group, at around 1 p.m., Goldberg checked the social platform X to see what was happening in Yemen. That was when he discovered that the U.S. bombing operation had in fact occurred. “It was crazy.”

Before publishing the story, Goldberg assembled three legal teams: one to safeguard the magazine’s press freedom rights; a second to determine whether publishing the information might violate any national security laws; and a third specializing in criminal law, to ensure that no journalists would be arrested.

The story was published at the end of March 2025, two weeks after Goldberg had been mistakenly added to the Signal chat group of top U.S. officials.

“It was the laziest reporting job I’ve ever done. I wouldn’t even have to get out of bed,” the journalist joked.

He then explained that the main purpose of the investigation was to expose the government’s mistake. Through the messaging app, which in theory should be prohibited for the exchange of classified information because it does not provide retention and archiving of messages, senior members of the Trump administration shared state secrets, attack strategies, and even the name of a CIA operative, from the country’s main intelligence agency.

The government, however, denied that the information was classified, since admitting otherwise would require acknowledging the security breach. “But anyone with eyes could see that it was incredibly secret. It was the most secret thing there could possibly be.”

After publishing the exposé, The Atlantic came under heavy attack from Trump and his supporters, who argued that Goldberg should have alerted officials that he had been added to the group by mistake.

The journalist said the group was shut down shortly after the bombings took place. He also emphasized that The Atlantic respects the country's national security and would never put the life of an American soldier at risk.

Goldberg was later summoned to meet with the president in person in the Oval Office at the White House.

“The Atlantic would be more successful if it were nicer to Trump,” the president said, referring to himself in the third person.

Analyzing American politics, Goldberg said one must wait and see whether authoritarian tendencies will be confined to Trump himself or whether he will usher in a lasting authoritarian regime.

“With this kind of attitude, the system of checks and balances will not withstand the pressure for very long,” he said. “All presidents lie, and all administrations try to distort the truth. But what we are dealing with now is something different.” That, he argued, underscores the importance of investigative journalism in the United States.

Under Goldberg’s leadership, The Atlantic has won three Pulitzer Prizes. The first recognized its detailed and in-depth coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic. The magazine was also honored for a story about the trauma experienced by a family that lost a son in the September 11 attacks, and for an investigation into the Trump administration’s policy of separating immigrant children from their parents at the U.S. border.

Today, the publication counts more than one million subscribers, whose contributions account for 80% of the magazine’s budget. Despite the rise of social media and the decline in the number of American readers, Goldberg believes there is still a demand for the long-form, in-depth journalism for which The Atlantic is known. In his view, that does not mean abandoning social media. The key, he said, is to maintain the same level of excellence in audiovisual production.

Goldberg added that one of his goals as the magazine’s editor is to reach younger audiences in their twenties and show them that “thinking is something that needs to be cultivated.” In turbulent times, he argued, the essential task is to ensure that ideas and debates reach as many people as possible.

“Our job is to explain the United States,” Goldberg said. “We need to show people that their lives will be better once they become aware of what is happening in the world.”

In addition to Goldberg, the piauí Journalism Festival featured several other prominent figures in global journalism. Among them were Dean Baquet, who led The New York Times from 2014 to 2022; Musikilu Mojeed, editor-in-chief of the Nigerian newspaper Premium Times; and Olga Rudenko, editor-in-chief of the digital newspaper The Kyiv Independent. The full list of participants can be found here.