Trevor Aaronson on Podcasts, Twitter, and Protecting Sources

Your Fellows Project is a book and a podcast series about Americans who joined the Islamic State. Could you tell us a little more about it and your goals for the project?

I think it’s fair to say that every journalist wants the same thing—a large audience for their work. But while the logistics of accessing great journalism are easier than ever today, reaching large audiences is actually more difficult for journalists as a result of, among other things, filter bubbles, tribalized media, and changes in the ways people receive information.

The goal for my New America project is to reach a large audience by telling one story in two different mediums. While the processes of working on a book and a podcast have differences—for example, unlike with a podcast, you’re not too concerned about the quality of your audio in recording an interview for a book—the work is the same journalist’s quest: identify the story, find the facts and people, and research everything fully. But podcasts require information to be distilled to a much greater degree than would be needed in a written piece, and I’ve actually found that process helpful in refining my ideas and how I want to tell the story in a larger written work.

What role do you think investigative reporting plays in today’s media landscape filled with hot takes and Twitter?

Journalists seem to love Twitter. But I wish more would remember that only 22 percent of Americans use Twitter, and of those users, most rarely tweet. Twitter creates this noisy echo chamber in which the news cycle changes fast and everyone is easily outraged. A friend of mine recently sent me this USA Today piece—which is, in fact, just a collection of tweets masquerading as journalism. Don’t get wrong: I’m not trying to single out this particular story. Rather, it’s just one example of this type of Twitter-based reporting we see more and more today.

I think investigative reporting—the type of work that takes months, even years—is a necessary antidote to Twitter’s fast pace and instant outrage, which we see reflected increasingly in our news media, particularly on cable news. But investigative reporting is also very expensive, and while news organizations often pay lip service to it, funding for deeply reported stories has been declining and continues to decline. That’s why philanthropy, such as New America’s support for fellows like me, is so critical for investigative reporting right now.

You wrote recently about a former Army sniper who was recruited by the FBI to be an informant. When it comes to writing about informants and other sensitive subjects, what steps do you take to protect their privacy and safety?

I often write about FBI informants, and when people ask me why, I remind them that there are more informants working for the FBI than there are agents. Some informants, such as Chris Stevens, the Army sniper in the article above, want to make their names and stories public. Others want to call attention to something, but don’t want me to use their names publicly. For that reason, communicating with informants requires some forethought. Encrypted email and apps like Signal, which allows for encrypted calls and texts, offer some measure of security.

When it comes to naming an informant in a story, I take seriously privacy and safety concerns. But I also think that the FBI and other U.S. intelligence agencies are at times able to avoid accountability by telling journalists, without supporting evidence, that naming an agent or an informant would somehow endanger the person or national security. I’ve had the FBI ask me not to name agents or informants for security reasons even when they’ve been identified in court records or have testified in open court. Just as U.S. government agencies classify too much information, they often push for unnecessary secrecy in other areas. It’s critical that journalists push back.

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