Prof. Jeff Jarvis grades the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg on SignalGate

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The wrong Jeff, the right moment
When Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, received an explosive Signal message intended for someone else — Jeffrey Clark, the former Justice Department official — it set off a journalistic firestorm now dubbed “SignalGate.” The leak, which revealed internal conservative conversations about foreign policy, became one of the most scrutinized media stories of the year.

But what does the saga say about journalistic ethics and newsroom judgment in 2024?

Enter Jeff Jarvis, renowned journalism professor and media ethicist, who spoke with Editor & Publisher about Goldberg’s handling of the leak, what it reveals about newsrooms today, and why this moment matters for journalism. “You got the wrong Jeff today,” Jarvis joked. “But I get the thing here… just like the Signal discussion out of our defense and intelligence, they put the wrong Jeff in.”

Still, Jarvis made clear why he was the right Jeff to weigh in. “Goldberg found himself, as he puts it, sitting in a grocery store parking lot saying, WTF. And on the opposite end of your question, I’ve heard many on the socials praise Goldberg because he didn’t wait two years to put it in his book. He came out in a timely fashion, having been careful about what he did and how he did it.”

Judgment day in the newsroom

Jarvis used the Goldberg affair to make a broader point about newsroom decision-making and institutional courage.

“One of my theories here is that we have a crisis of judgment,” he explained. “In this age of mass media and the effort to serve everybody — which is a myth — they’ve become so cautious, they’ve worn out the thesaurus trying to find ways not to say authoritarian, totalitarian and fascist.”

That caution, Jarvis argued, waters down coverage of rising threats to democracy and leaves newsrooms timid. “What’s great about the Signal story is that it’s obviously a big story, and everybody had to treat it with some size. They didn’t put the wood on it, but it spread all around.”

Avoiding the bait and staying grounded
Jarvis was unequivocal when asked whether incidents like SignalGate might encourage others to plant false information to bait journalists. “I don’t think they need any incitement,” he said. “They’ve been doing it as long as they can. The question is whether a newsroom has its guard down and doesn’t realize it.”

He used the moment to remind journalists of the importance of internal safeguards and community. “There’s a process,” Jarvis emphasized. “You have to do a smell check immediately and look for anybody to say, ‘This is why you shouldn’t trust this.’ And then before you publish, you’ve got to go to the source.”

Ethics and the Atlantic’s moment
While Goldberg faced criticism from political actors, Jarvis maintained that the editor’s restraint and verification process demonstrated integrity and set an example. “He held back a lot, just as The Guardian held back a lot from the Snowden revelations, because they made a responsible judgment about national security and safety,” Jarvis said.

“And when Tulsi Gabbard et al. went before Congress saying, ‘No, no, nothing classified there,’ Trump said the same — [Goldberg] was freed to say, ‘Okay, then I’m going to publish it.’ And again, he went to them, and they said, ‘Okay.’”

Transparency and stupidity collide
Beyond journalistic ethics, SignalGate laid bare government missteps and reminded everyone how not to communicate in the digital age. “It’s a cavalcade of stupidity,” Jarvis said. “It is all around. They shouldn’t have been on Signal at all. They certainly shouldn’t have added the wrong Jeff.”

At the same time, Jarvis acknowledged the strange blessing of the moment: “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see what was happening here. It’s highly revelatory about the relationships. You see J.D. Vance disagreeing with the king. You see Stephen Miller coming in and cutting it all off.”

An A+ and a lesson for journalism
So, how did Goldberg do in Jarvis’s professional estimation? “Oh, this is unquestionably an A-plus, so skip the next class,” he said. “This story took over all the news media for two days and also took over The Atlantic. And I think that’s an important lesson for them — they have great work there.”

But he also warned against volume-driven publishing models. “I don’t want to see it buried in a flood of content to try to get the clicks and links our business models today drive us toward.”