Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, is a profile in courage and responsibility after being in the wrong place at the right time.
A nominee for the Genesis Prize in 2021, Goldberg was accidentally invited into a chat group on an open-source messaging service Signal, where top US government security officials were discussing plans to strike the Houthis. Well after the attack was successfully executed, Goldberg reported on the security breach, knowing he would be subjected to personal attacks and insults by the conservative media and the officials involved, while also potentially putting The Atlantic magazine in harm’s way.
Before Trump’s inauguration on January 20, 2025, most journalists would probably do the same and some might not even have waited until the attack against the Houthis was over. But that was then and this is now. Since January 20, too many journalists and media outlets have genuflected to political pressure, fearing lawsuits, boycotts and online hate campaigns.
As of the end of March, Trump was suing numerous news organizations, including CBS and the Des Moines Register. He had previously sued ABC, which settled for $15 million and an apology. Amazon, owned by Jeff Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post, paid a $40 million licensing fee for producing a documentary on Melania Trump. This came shortly after Bezos instructed the Washington Post to kill the written, but unpublished endorsement of Kamala Harris last October, similar to what billionaire businessman Patrick Soon-Shiong had done with his Los Angeles Times.
NBC News, The New York Times, NPR and Politico have been kicked out of their dedicated Pentagon workspaces and replaced by right-wing sites such as Breitbart News and One America News. AP was banned from the White House for refusing to call the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America,” and along with Reuters was denied access to Trump’s first cabinet meeting.
In this climate, the wisest and safest course of action for Goldberg would have been to immediately notify the participants on the call that he was inadvertently included, leave the chat group, and not to say anything about it publicly.
But he refused to remain silent and instead, published the story in which he sounded the alarm about highly sensitive and detailed military attack plans being discussed on easily hacked chat platforms. In subsequent interviews, Goldberg explained that his goal was to expose Trump administration mishandling of classified information, in hope that remedial action will be taken quickly, and lives of US servicemen and covert operatives will not be put at risk. (Der Spiegel reporters, following up on Goldberg’s article, were able to find mobile phone numbers, email addresses and even some passwords belonging to the most important security advisors to President Trump, demonstrating that adversaries could hack their devices, insert spyware, and seriously harm US interests.)
Making choices
The response from the Trump world was predictable.
President Trump said Goldberg is a “total sleazebag” and The Atlantic a “failing publication.” Defense Secretary Hegseth referred to Goldberg as “a deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist who peddles in garbage.” And National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, denied the responsibility for including Goldberg in the chat group, suggested that Goldberg may have “hacked” the chatgroup, and called him a “loser.”
“This entire story was another hoax written by a Trump-hater who is well-known for his sensationalist spin," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt posted on X.
So why didn’t Goldberg remain silent and keep the affair to himself? Why did he decide to take on an increasingly authoritarian administration whose head, Donald Trump, has been referring to the press as an “enemy of the people” since he launched his first presidential campaign?
And more broadly, why have so many Jewish journalists used the might of the press to speak truth to power, to uncover abuses, criminal acts, and policy failures hidden from public view?
The answer may lie in our Jewish upbringing, our values, and, yes, our DNA. This is why we Jews have rarely been silent in the face of oppression, even when it meant risking imprisonment or even death.
Jewish values and journalism
Freedom – including the freedom of speech – is a fundamental Jewish value, as are questioning authority and saving human life. Goldberg is the latest in a long line of principled Jewish journalists who have applied these values in shaping investigative journalism in the US and many other countries. They have used their pens and cameras to uncover the criminal acts of the powerful, expose corruption, and help stop wars and massacres.
And in taking on these challenges, like Goldberg, they were willing to take significant risks to reveal the truth, recognizing a personal or collective responsibility to stand up to abuses of power.
Examples abound:
The Washington Post’s Carl Bernstein, together with his non-Jewish colleague Bob Woodward, made history exposing the Watergate scandal and bringing down the Nixon Administration. The editors who guided the Watergate investigation – Howard Simons, Barry Sussman and Harry Rosenfeld – were all Jewish. Bernstein later co-authored “All the President's Men,” for which he and Woodward were awarded the Pulitzer Prize (named after a Jewish publisher, Joseph Pulitzer).
Daniel Ellsberg, a Jewish military analyst at RAND Corporation concerned about the US government lying to the American people about the Vietnam War, leaked the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Department of Defense study revealing that multiple US administrations had misled the public about the war’s progress and the likelihood of success.
Ellsberg initially gave the documents to the Jewish-owned New York Times, which began publishing excerpts in June 1971. The US government, citing national security concerns, obtained an injunction to stop the New York Times from publishing further. In response, The Washington Post, led by publisher Katharine Graham – a descendant of several generations of rabbis including the Grand Rabbi of France – decided to publish the documents. Her decision was a bold stand for press freedom, despite legal and political pressure.
Descendant of several generations of rabbis and courageous publisher of Washington Post Katharine Graham
The case, New York Times Co. v. United States, reached the Supreme Court, which ruled 6-3 against the Nixon administration, reinforcing the First Amendment’s protection of the press. The ruling was a landmark victory for press freedom, asserting that the government could not impose "prior restraint" (pre-publication censorship) without overwhelming justification. This decision would not have been achieved were it not for the courage of the Jews involved: Daniel Ellsberg, Katharine Graham, the Jewish editors of the Washington Post, and NY Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger and managing editor A. M. Rosenthal.
Jewish journalists as heroes
A year before the publication of the Pentagon Papers in 1971, American Jewish investigative journalist Seymour Hersh uncovered the My Lai Massacre, a war crime committed by American soldiers during the Vietnam War. The incident was the largest massacre of civilians by US forces in the 20th century, in which up to 500 women, children, and elderly men were murdered by US Army soldiers. The revelation shocked the world and earned Hersch a Pulitzer Prize. Decades later, in 2005, Hersh uncovered the abuse of detainees by US personnel at Abu Ghraib in Iraq. His disclosures led to criminal convictions of the perpetrators and the closure of the infamous prison.
In his investigative reporting, Hersch relied mostly on military and intelligence sources, including whistleblowers, while working from the safety of Washington and New York. Many others ventured to dangerous areas, hostile countries, and war zones. In 2002, a brilliant Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl went missing in Pakistan, where he was investigating Al-Qaida. He had been abducted and subsequently brutally murdered by Islamic militants. His final words were, “My name is Daniel Pearl. My father is Jewish, my mother is Jewish, and I am a Jew."
And in 2014, Steven Sotloff, who covered the Middle East for TIME, was captured in northern Syria, tortured for a year, and filmed while being beheaded by ISIS. Sotloff’s grandparents were Holocaust survivors, who inspired him to be “a voice for the voiceless.” A dual US-Israeli citizen, he broke the Benghazi story to CNN, proving that the attack and killing of American officials by Islamic terrorists was premeditated. Sotloff’s beheading created broad public awareness of the terror group ISIS, prompting President Obama to declare that America would “degrade and destroy” ISIS.
The greatest amount of good
While certainly not risking a beheading, Goldberg knew that making the information about “Signalgate” public would put him in Trump’s crosshairs. And it did. In return for performing an important mitzvah for US national security and the security of its allies, Goldberg has been personally vilified by President Trump and his sycophants, ridiculed on Fox News, and investigated by Elon Musk’s team which is looking how he “entered” the Signal chat (to which he was invited by National Security Advisor Mike Waltz). Certainly, no source in the Republican party will dare speak with Goldberg in the foreseeable future, an enormous price to pay for a Washington-based political journalist.
And we are yet to see whether The Atlantic will face any legal consequences.
Fortunately, the magazine has a wealthy publisher and can likely withstand attacks from the Trump Administration.
It is owned by the Emerson Collective, a non-profit created in 2004 by Steve Job’s widow, Laurene Powell Jobs, one of the wealthiest women in the world with a net worth of $30 billion. The non-profit is named after transcendentalist writer Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose 1837 speech “The American Scholar” is often referred to as America's "Intellectual Declaration of Independence." The stated mission of the Emerson Collective is to do the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people.
Goldberg said about his boss: “Laurene Powell Jobs is a stalwart and brave publisher at a time when cowardice rules the day.”
Had Mr. Emerson been alive today, he undoubtedly would be proud of Jeffrey Goldberg. I’m sure Ms. Jobs is.
The writer is the co-founder/chairman of the Genesis Prize