New York Times journalist Maggie Haberman is expected to release damning information on former President Donald Trump’s relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, in her new book Confidence Man –but has come under fire for saving the explosive revelations for her personal project.
Ms Haberman, who has had access to the White House and Mr Trump’s inner circle for years, through her work as a White House correspondent for The New York Times and a political analyst for CNN, claims in her new book that staff in Trump’s White House discovered papers blocking the president’s bathroom a number of times. The assumption by staff was that Mr Trump was tearing up official papers and flushing them away.
The former president has predictably dismissed the story as “fake news”.
“Also, another fake story, that I flushed papers and documents down a White House toilet, is categorically untrue and simply made up by a reporter in order to get publicity for a mostly fictitious book,” he said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Ms Haberman has also received ire - not for releasing the information but for doing so so late.
“I worked at five newspapers in my career. At every one of them our first and only responsibility was to our readers, NOT reporters who were sitting on stories and writing books to serve themselves,” said D. Earl Stephens, the managing editor of military news publication Stars and Stripes on Twitter.
“I am past sick and tired of Maggie Haberman, the NYT and all these damn books.”
Activist and author Amy Siskin wrote: “Reporters at the NYT and beyond circling the wagons to protect Maggie Haberman, and openly ridiculing accusations of what clearly appears to be unethical behaviour, is why journalistic practices don’t improve and trust in journalism is largely in the basement.”
“Maggie Haberman is the poster girl for what’s wrong with modern journalism. Profit over profession,” said another Twitter user.
“Yea congrats to her sitting on a story about the sitting president destroying classified documents just so she can get paid,” wrote another.
“I have no problem with government officials, journalists, or anyone in the government, media, or any other agency choosing to do a book after their career. What I do have a problem with is people like Maggie Haberman, Jon Bolton, and others choosing profit over Democracy,” tweeted David Weissman, an opinion writer for Occupy Democrats.
“The Maggie Haberman book has convinced me that one of the best things you can do for journalism other than subscriptions to local and reliable publications, is refusing to buy books by political journos that revolve around things they learned on the beat, especially if unreported,” said another user.
A US congressional committee has started investigations into Mr Trump’s handling of official documents after 15 boxes of records were transferred from his Florida resort to a federal agency. The documents “appear to have been removed from the White House in violation of the Presidential Records Act,” said Carolyn Maloney, chair for the House of Representatives Oversight Committee.
The Independent has contacted Penguin Random House and Maggie Haberman for comment.
