Jeffrey Goldberg

Jeffrey Goldberg     (journalist, editor, propagandist)
Jeffrey Goldberg (left) sitting with then-Secretary of State John Kerry at the Brookings Institution’s 2016 Saban Forum for Israeli and American leaders.
Born	Jeffrey Mark Goldberg 1965-09-22 Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
Alma mater	University of Pennsylvania
Children	3
Spouse	Pamela Ress Reeves
Party	Democratic Party
"Netanyahu's faithful stenographer"  Editor-in-chief In office 2016 - Present Employer The Atlantic

Jeffrey Goldberg is an American journalist and editor.

Goldberg wrote one of the most deceitful and destructive articles of his generation: a lengthy New Yorker article in May, 2002, right as the propagandistic groundwork for the invasion of Iraq was being laid, that claimed Saddam Hussein had formed an alliance with Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. Nothing could generate more hatred for someone among the American population.

Remarkably (or not) this lie did not end his career, but propelled him to the pinnacle of the US corporate media system. Even Roger Cohen of the The New York Times described him as "Netanyahu's faithful stenographer", while Glenn Greenwald observed:

That's why Goldberg is worth examining: he's so representative of the American media because the more discredited his journalism becomes, the more blatant propaganda he spews, the more he thrives in our media culture. That's why it's not hyperbole to observe that we are plagued by a Jeffrey Goldberg Media; he's not an aberration but one of its most typical and illustrative members.

Background

Goldberg is Jewish and was born in Brooklyn, New York. He grew up in suburban Long Island. Retroactively, when describing his first trip to the Israeli state as a teen, Goldberg recalled his youth being among pugnacious youth of a different ethnicity. He found the Jewish empowerment embodied by Israeli soldiers exciting, "So, I became deeply enamored of Israel because of that."

He attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he was editor-in-chief of The Daily Pennsylvanian. He left college to move to Israel, where he was in the Israeli Defense Forces during the First Intifada as a prison guard at Ktzi'ot Prison, a prison camp set up to hold arrested Palestinians.

Career

Goldberg returned to the United States and began his career at The Washington Post, where he was a police reporter. While in Israel, he worked as a columnist for The Jerusalem Post, and upon his return to the US was the New York bureau chief of The Forward, a contributing editor at New York magazine, and a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine. In October 2000, Goldberg joined The New Yorker.

In 2007, he was hired by David G. Bradley to write for The Atlantic. Bradley had tried to convince Goldberg to come work for The Atlantic for nearly two years, and was finally successful after renting ponies for Goldberg's children. In 2011, Goldberg joined Bloomberg View as a columnist, and his editorials are also syndicated online, often appearing on such media sites as Newsday.

Goldberg was a journalist with The Atlantic before becoming editor-in-chief in 2016.

On May 23, 2019, Goldberg delivered the commencement address for the Johns Hopkins University graduating class, stating "by fighting disinformation, by fighting for the truth, you will invest the degrees that you are receiving with true meaning."

Stories

Goldberg is the spreader of many propaganda stories, not only the Iraq-bin Laden connection, but also other dubious claims meant to promote certain narratives. Examples include:

• The Lebanese Hezbollah's alleged activities in South America (Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil).

• In a 2002 New Yorker article, he warned that Hezbollah was planning a master, Legion-of-Doom alliance with Saddam Hussein for a "larger war," and that "both Israel and the United States believe that, at the outset of an American campaign against Saddam, Iraq will fire missiles at Israel — perhaps with chemical or biological payloads — in order to provoke an Israeli conventional, or even nuclear, response"..."Hezbollah, which is better situated than Iraq to do damage to Israel, might do Saddam’s work itself".

• In 2010, he wrote the article "The Point of No Return", meant to ratchet up pressure for a US attack on Iran. "I have come to believe that the administration knows it is a near-certainty that Israel will act against Iran soon if nothing or no one else stops the nuclear program;

• In September 2020, Goldberg published "Trump: Americans Who Died in War Are 'Losers' and 'Suckers'". According to Goldberg's article, in cancelling a 2018 visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery and Memorial in France, which contains the remains of 2,289 U.S. service members killed in combat in World War I, President Donald Trump privately said, "Why should I go to that cemetery? It's filled with losers."

 

Event Participated in

Event	Start	End	Location(s)	Description
WEF/Annual Meeting/2019	22 January 2019	25 January 2019	Switzerland World Economic Forum	"The reality is that we are in a Cold War [against China] that threatens to turn into a hot one."

Many thanks to our Patrons who cover ~2/3 of our hosting bill. Please join them if you can.