3 Crucial Breakdowns In Journalistic Standards That Explain The Atlantic’s Trump Political Hit Piece

For Washington staffers and politicos, a day off on Monday creeps into a half-day on Friday (“to beat the traffic”), which seeps into an early Thursday (“packing for the trip”). Among this sizable set of folks stretching from the Hill to its consultants to their non-profits, Labor Day is half-sacred. The lazy, end-of-summer weekend away took a broadside Thursday night, however, when The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg published a badly sourced, difficult-to-confirm, belief-stretching story about President Donald Trump denigrating America’s honored dead at Belleau Woods, France.

The political motivation of the accusations was laid bare by early Friday morning when MSNBC debuted a political attack ad based on the piece that was prepared in a deeply suspicious record time. The trap was set — and poor adherence to journalistic practices made it all possible.