美国国家公共电台 NPR Atlantic Editor On Acrimony In U.S.: 'I Have To Imagine That It Actually Gets Worse'

Atlantic Editor On Acrimony In U.S.: 'I Have To Imagine That It Actually Gets Worse'

play pause stop mute unmute max volume 00:0007:02repeat repeat off Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser 1 to a recent version or update your Flash plugin. STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: 

The new editor of The Atlantic has a long career as a reporter. Jeffrey Goldberg has reported from Israel, Pakistan and Iran. He has spent hours interviewing President Obama. And this year, he was involved in a decision. Goldberg pressed for his magazine to endorse 2 Hillary Clinton for president. He said it was right, even though it's only the third time in its history that The Atlantic has endorsed 3 a presidential candidate.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: The Atlantic was founded by abolitionists, in 1857, to bring about an end of slavery. It was not merely a non-racist 4 magazine. It was an anti-racist magazine. It was about advancing the progressive American idea. It was about preserving the unity 5 of the Union. And so if you look at some of the things that Donald Trump 6 has said and done over the past year, these fly in the face of some core principles of the founders 7 of The Atlantic.

INSKEEP: Jeffrey Goldberg's job is to push that venerable publication into an uncertain future. He came by our studios to talk at a strange moment for the media and for the country. Many newspapers and magazines have called Donald Trump a threat to the republic. Trump has made the media his target, though he also has a media executive as his campaign CEO. All of this poses a challenge for the magazine and widely read website that Jeffrey Goldberg will lead. He wants The Atlantic to appeal to a wide audience at a moment when Americans are exceedingly divided.

GOLDBERG: We're entering a period in which a profound number of Americans are alienated 8 from a profound number of other Americans. And that is unhealthy. And that disturbs me.

INSKEEP: You just said entering a period, not ending a period. The election is about to happen - doesn't sound like you think this problem is going to end with the election.

GOLDBERG: I can't imagine that millions of Trump voters - having watched him lose and possibly having him come out and say the election was rigged - I can't imagine that all of these millions of disaffected 9, angry people are going to say, oh, well, Hillary Clinton won. I guess I got to get behind her. I wish that. And that's a nonpartisan wish. I can't imagine that this goes away. I have to imagine - and I don't mean to sound overly pessimistic. But I have to imagine that it actually gets worse.

INSKEEP: Is it possible that this experience has been good for everybody because problems and divisions have been exposed, and we can talk about them?

GOLDBERG: It's good in the sense that people are allowed to express themselves and express their frustrations 10 and anxieties. And, obviously, much of the mainstream 11 failed to understand, A, what people were feeling, and, B, failed to come up with solutions that might allay 12 some of these anxieties. On the other hand, the thing that I worry about the most is that we've had an election season and election rhetoric 13 that's untethered from observable reality.

So you have a candidate now who says, I didn't say X, when there's tape of him saying X. And that doesn't seem to affect his supporters. In the old model, when you catch a candidate making an obvious lie, that usually hurts the candidate - even among that candidate's base. And so we've moved into a new phase of the way in which truth is understood in part of the American polity, and that's troubling.

INSKEEP: So you were named Atlantic editor the other day. And I sent out a tweet about Jeffrey Goldberg being the editor of The Atlantic. And I got a bunch of tweets back - anti-Semitic. And they're, like, elaborate, with artwork and not just one or two...

GOLDBERG: Well, at least they're trying hard.

INSKEEP: ...Like a bunch. And then a few days later, the Anti-Defamation League puts out this list of journalists who've been targeted with thousands and thousands of anti-Semitic tweets. And you were in the top 10.

GOLDBERG: Right.

INSKEEP: What's that been like?

GOLDBERG: Well, I am glad that Nazis 15 hate me. I consider that a compliment.

INSKEEP: And Nazi 14 is the right word for the people who...

GOLDBERG: These are neo-Nazis. These are neo-Nazis on Twitter. And I'm inured 16 to it, in a kind of way, because I wake up in the morning, and I open up Twitter. And some days, I'll have a hundred messages - all with basically the same theme, which is that I should be gassed or - and that my family should be put in the ovens.

I'm inured to it. But I also think this is a challenge for Twitter, in a way. I don't want to be on Twitter as much because I find it a little bit dispiriting to start my day with that kind of discourse 17. It doesn't scare me, but it just is dispiriting.

INSKEEP: Was this happening to you two years ago or five years ago?

GOLDBERG: No, most of these are Trump supporters. I will say that very bluntly. And it's easy to tell because their avatars are advertising 18 themselves as Trump supporters. And so I link this phenomenon to the rise of Trump-ism. And I wish that the Trump campaign would make a definitive 19 statement against this kind of neo-Nazi horror. But so far, I have not had satisfaction on that front.

INSKEEP: I'm just thinking Trump can defend himself, and has, by saying he's the least racist person who's ever lived. His supporters can point out, correctly, he has a son-in-law who's Jewish.

GOLDBERG: Right.

INSKEEP: At the same time, he gave a speech the other day where he started talking about a conspiracy 20 of international bankers. And he didn't say Jewish bankers...

GOLDBERG: That's a dog whistle.

INSKEEP: ...But you say certain things, and people hear them a certain way. Do you think he's a racist?

GOLDBERG: At the very least, he traffics in racial invective 21 knowingly. To me, that's a threshold question. If you do that, and if you know what you're doing, then, yes, you're a racist. I think he's a racist. I go back to the incident with the judge...

INSKEEP: Judge Curiel.

GOLDBERG: Judge Curiel. The way Donald Trump spoke 22 in that period was, to me, un-American and racist.

INSKEEP: This guy's a Mexican, as Trump labeled him, and, therefore, can't be here.

GOLDBERG: Yeah, this is the challenge in media, right? The challenge in media is, how do you call a thing by a name when that thing is, A, in the mainstream now but also an egregious 23 thing? And I think we've had trouble catching 24 up to the new reality. I think now people are having an easier time calling out lies as lies when they're issued. But I know that a lot of my colleagues have a problem using the term racist. And so we say, traffics in racial invective or, divides rather than unites and all sorts of euphemism 25. But I have to say that when you look at...

INSKEEP: Can you just say what he did and said without labeling it? Is that a way to get out of that?

GOLDBERG: I suppose it is. But there's something about clarity and directness that's useful in journalism 26.

INSKEEP: And it's a time when you need to say racist if it's racist, in your view.

GOLDBERG: Well, I think, personally, that people will be judged in coming years by how they reacted to these very novel and disturbing events of the past several months. And one of the reasons - I think one of the many reasons we wanted to endorse Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump - only the third time in our history of doing that - is we wanted to get on the right side.

We wanted to say, look, we did what we could. We're a magazine. We did what we could. We wrote about this in a direct way. And I'm proud of that. And I would rather not have regrets later on that I didn't say what I was thinking because it's impolite.

INSKEEP: Jeffrey Goldberg is the new editor of The Atlantic. Thanks for coming by.

GOLDBERG: Thank you.