New York Times journalist Maggie Haberman’s latest book with fellow Times reporter Jonathan Swan is renewing a longstanding debate in journalism: When reporters uncover information of significant public interest, should they publish it as soon as it can be verified? Or is it ever acceptable or appropriate to save some details for later?
Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump chronicles Trump’s attempts to consolidate power during his second term, detailing how he’s sought to bend government institutions to his will and challenge longstanding constraints on the presidency. According to the authors, who conducted more than 1,000 interviews and extensive behind-the-scenes reporting for the book, Trump came to believe there were “no limits” on presidential authority and often points to figures such as Napoleon and Genghis Khan as examples of strong leadership.
“Trump is using power in a way that is unrecognizable from his first term and unlike any other president,” Haberman told Katie Couric during a recent interview.
As Regime Change generates fresh headlines, the argument over when journalists should publish consequential information has resurfaced.
The query has followed Haberman before. Her 2022 bestseller, Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, drew criticism after it revealed new details about Trump’s efforts to remain in power following the 2020 election. Some argued that the information should have been reported sooner, while Haberman and The New York Times maintained that key details weren’t fully confirmed until later.
We spoke with journalism experts about where they draw the line.
Should journalists publish major revelations immediately?
For Aileen Gallagher, an associate professor at Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communications, the quandary begins with a journalist’s obligation to readers.
“The first responsibility is always to the audience. What does the audience need to know, and when do they need to know it?” she tells us.
That principle can be difficult to apply in practice. According to Betsy Morais, editor-in-chief of the Columbia Journalism Review, whether journalists should publish information immediately often depends on the circumstances.
“If the information is in the immediate public interest, if it could potentially save lives — or the absence of it could put lives at risk — those are serious considerations, and a journalist has a responsibility to confront them,” Morais tells us.
But in many cases, the urgency is less clear, because what appears to be a major revelation in hindsight may not seem as significant in the moment. “Journalists often need more time than a daily news cycle allows to fully understand the scope or implications of a story they’re reporting,” says Morais.
Reality itself can be fluid, she adds, particularly when officials leak information strategically to test public reaction.
“Taking time to collect and vet information, seeing how circumstances play out — that can have major value and reveal major stories that would be impossible on a fast-turn basis,” says Morais. “Or make clear what’s not so major after all.”
Morais points out that books can serve a purpose that daily journalism often cannot, allowing reporters time to verify facts, gather additional sourcing, and place events in a broader context.
“There’s value particular to a book project in providing context, checking facts, setting words against actions, and fully engaging with the complexity of the subject at hand,” she says. “You can’t always get all that if you’re also trying to be fast and first.”
Haberman echoed that distinction in her interview with Katie, noting that Regime Change reached bookstores just 17 months into Trump’s second term, which she emphasized is “an extraordinarily quick amount of time in the publishing world.”
Gallagher agreed that longer-form reporting (like a book) and breaking news often serve different functions. “There’s context and depth in it, and that’s what the value is.”
Do book deals create incentives to hold back information?
Media critics, journalism ethicists, and some fellow reporters have long discussed whether lucrative book advances actually create incentives for journalists to reserve information for future projects, rather than publish it immediately.
When asked whether those motivations exist, Morais didn’t hesitate: “Of course they do,” she tells us.
Gallagher agreed that book projects can create potential conflicts between commercial incentives and a journalist’s obligation to the public. But rather than focusing on whether those incentives exist, she said news organizations should have safeguards in place to prevent them from influencing publication decisions. “Book deals create opportunities to hold back information, so what are the guardrails we’re putting in place to ensure that doesn’t happen?”
Still, acknowledging those temptations isn’t the same as proving that reporters are intentionally withholding information that should be published sooner. What may look like a withheld scoop from the outside may, in practice, be a story that was not yet fully reported, verified, or ready to publish. Haberman offered a glimpse into that process during her interview with Katie, explaining that she and Swan “spent an enormous amount of time” ensuring they had “multiple inputs and multiple accounts of how these things transpired.”
In many cases, journalism books don’t reveal previously unpublished information so much as they connect reporting from months or years into a broader narrative. The controversy tends to arise when books contain genuinely new revelations that were newsworthy at the time.
It’s those situations, Gallagher argues, that require clear newsroom processes. She emphasized that newsrooms should have mechanisms for addressing publication decisions when they become complicated, arguing that “every newsroom needs to have a structure set up so that there’s a way to raise these concerns.”
While Gallagher acknowledged that these decisions are often highly situational, she argued that journalists should be cautious about allowing commercial considerations to shape publication decisions. She says that the clearest line to establish is whether a journalist is putting commercial interests ahead of the readers’ needs.
“If you’re withholding information from the audience in order to sell more books, then that’s a conflict of interest,” she says. “You compromise yourself, and you compromise the audience, really.”
Should there be clearer rules?
Part of the reason this issue continues to generate controversy is that journalism has never established a universal standard for handling it.
One of the most frequently cited examples involves journalist Bob Woodward’s 2020 book, Rage. The book revealed that Trump privately acknowledged the dangers of Covid-19 in February 2020 while publicly downplaying the threat.
When the book was released, many critics asked why the information had not been published earlier. Morais pointed to criticism from media columnist Margaret Sullivan, who argued that even if there were only a small chance that publicizing Trump’s comments sooner could have saved lives, journalists had an obligation to do so.
Woodward defended his decision, maintaining that he was still working to verify the broader story and did not know whether Trump’s private comments accurately reflected reality.
Looking back, Morais says, the debate illustrates how difficult these decisions can be.
“Our understanding of that story depends on hindsight,” she says. “Given Trump’s tendency to lie and say different things to different people, I think the reality of the impact is complicated.”
The way these decisions are made also varies significantly across news organizations. Publication choices are often shaped by a mix of ethical considerations, newsroom practices, contractual obligations, sourcing concerns, and editorial judgment. Morais noted that some reporters work relatively independently, while others are in constant communication with editors throughout the reporting process.
“Some reporters operate independently enough that their editor in the office won’t know what they’ve got for some time, and others are in constant communication, multitasking,” Morais says. “It varies.”
Why this debate matters
The controversy surrounding Haberman’s latest book is ultimately about more than one reporter or one publication. In an era of constant updates, push alerts, and social media, the debate reflects a broader tension within journalism: the balance between speed and depth, immediacy and context, and breaking news and long-form reporting.
And as journalists increasingly move between books, podcasts, newsletters, documentaries, and traditional newsrooms, questions about when information should be published — and whether commercial interests influence those decisions — are likely to become more common.
Gallagher argues that this issue is especially important right now, at a moment in which confidence in the media remains fragile. “In times of diminished public trust,” she says, “it matters a lot if the public feels that the reporter was acting in their own best interest — before the audience’s best interest.”
