By Sophia Scolman
After President Trump left office in 2020, New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman released a book called “Confidence Man,” in which she revealed that Trump had no intention of leaving office after losing the election. This book and several others on the Trump Administration sparked backlash with critics arguing that journalists who “saved” information for their books had withheld vital news from the public.
And yet, according to Allison Hantschel, five-time author and DAME Magazine contributor, saving newsworthy information for a book publication is not a new practice. Hantschel pointed towards Bob Woodward, calling him the “master practitioner” of holding onto scoops. Woodward came under fire in 2020 for saving his discovery that Trump intentionally downplayed the seriousness of COVID-19 for his book “Rage.” And he was in hot water again after the 2024 release of “War,” which revealed that Trump sent COVID testing machines to Russian President Vladimir Putin at the start of the pandemic.
With studies showing that Americans are losing trust in the media and paying less attention to politics, former professor at Arizona State University Walter Cronkite School of Journalism Dan Gillmor said in an email statement to the Center for Journalism Ethics that it’s more important than ever that people have access to the information they need.
“Facts and documented actions matter more than ever at a time when the stakes are higher than ever,” Gillmor said.
Journalist-authors today face a harsher climate and higher stakes, reinvigorating the conversation surrounding their ethics and responsibilities. They must balance source relationships, contractual obligations and public interest when writing and researching their books — an equation that is more difficult to balance than it appears on the surface.
Journalist by day, author by night
Most authors work a day job in addition to working on a book for publication, Columbia Journalism School professor Samuel Freedman said in an email statement. As the author of 10 books and an advisory board member for the Center for Journalism Ethics, Freedman said it’s rare for an author to secure a book contract that can pay for the years of reporting, research and writing that nonfiction books require.
This dynamic raises important questions about a journalist’s relationship to the publisher and their employer, Freedman said.
“Does the news organization deserve a portion of the money from the publishing contract?” Freedman asked. “Does the news organization deserve first dibs on publishing excerpts from the book? If the journalist comes up with scoops in the course of working on the book, is it ethical to withhold those scoops till the book is published, or should that scoop be revealed sooner by the news organization?”
In many cases, the idea to write a book is spurred by the wealth of knowledge a journalist develops in the beat they regularly report on, Freedman said. This raises ethical questions about the relationship between a staff journalist and the news organization that “essentially paid for” the research and development of the book.
In this situation, Freedman said “it’s only fair and ethical” that the news organization employing the journalist retain the right to break important stories that were developed or discovered during their day jobs, especially if they grant the journalist paid or unpaid leave to work on the project.
Contracts are typically decided through a three-way negotiation between the publishing company, news organization and a journalist’s literary agent, Freedman said. However, they are not all created equal and vary based on the subject matter and the circumstances of the journalists writing it.
“Every book is its own product and so every book contract is negotiated individually,” Freedman said. “Who has what leverage varies in every single contract negotiation.”
Considering a journalist’s responsibility
Gillmor said that financial interests often trump ethical ones in today’s media climate. But, according to Freedman, those two interests are not always competing. Sometimes sharing new, important information with the public ahead of time serves a dual-interest, informing the public and creating excitement surrounding the book’s release.
“The public’s need to know must be paramount,” Freedman said. “And publishing a scoop during the book-writing process can often heighten readers’ interest in the forthcoming book.”
Contracts aside, journalists must balance their ethical responsibilities both to their audience and their sources when deciding what to do with important information they uncover while working on their books.
In considering this balance, Hantschel emphasizes the public’s right to know.
“If my priority is informing my audience at the newspaper that I work for and made me the household name that I am, then I should be doing that as clearly and as quickly as possible,” Hantschel said.
In 2021 Hanschtel wrote an article for DAME Magazine on this topic, acknowledging incentives for saving information, like mainstream media attention and book sales but argued, “none of those arguments have anything to do with readers, the public interest, or the purpose of keeping democracy from dying in darkness that we hear so much about.”
Today, Hanschtel asks, “Are you about your readers, or are you about yourself?”
Though it’s easy to attribute gatekeeping of information by book-writing journalists to financial motivation, author and editor at The Washington Post David Maraniss said there is another crucial factor often at play — a journalist’s responsibility to their sources.
“A cardinal rule of journalism is never to out your sources, which in many cases, almost but not every case, overrules the notion of releasing something as it’s happening for the public good,” Maraniss said.
Sources may agree to talk to a journalist exclusively for a book because of the delayed publication time or richer context included in a longer piece of reporting, Maraniss said. If a journalist decides that the information they uncover is so important that the public must be informed immediately, they risk losing valuable connections for future reporting.
“If you break your sources, you’ll never get anything again, because you’ll be unreliable,” Maraniss said. “Only in a case where people’s lives would be at stake, I think, can you try to break that promise, and you would do it by going back to the source and making that case.”
Maraniss noted that he has never faced this ethical dilemma during his time as an author or journalist because he only does on-the-record interviews and does not offer anonymity to his sources. But he emphasized that in some cases it’s necessary in order to gather vital information.
Maraniss said he understands public outrage that follows the revelation that a reporter has withheld information, but says the question of when and when not to release information is multifaceted and requires consideration of not just an author’s responsibility to the audience and publisher, but to their sources as well.
“I think you have to look at each case individually and balance those different parts of the equation,” Maraniss said. “It’s easy to look at an issue like this as a pure ethical breach to the public, and I understand that completely, but I think that’s a little bit simplistic.”
Sophia Scolman is a 2024-25 fellow at the Center for Journalism Ethics and a senior in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
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