Sometimes journalists find themselves in what we call ethical dilemmas. If you report the story people will get hurt but the story is too important not to tell.
Or maybe you have to do something that isn’t quite right to get information; someone gave you information you weren’t meant to have or you had to trespass or violate someone’s privacy or in some way break the law to get the information you need for a story.
A great example of an ethical dilemma is what faced Jeffrey Goldberg in March 2025. He’s the head of the Atlantic magazine and found himself included in an online chat on Signal with the U.S. vice president, secretary of defense and other high level people in national security in the U.S. government. They were chatting about an imminent attack on Yemen.
Goldberg didn’t initially report any of it because he thought it must be fake; how could he, a journalist, have ended up on a chat about top secret security issues? He reported it once he realized it was real and after the attack had happened. He even displayed parts of the chat.
What he reported involved information that was obviously classified. But the story that was so important it had to be told was how fast and loose high-level officials of the United States were with information that was a secret for a reason. The release of the information to the wrong people could put American troops in jeopardy.
In reporting the story, Goldberg told readers that there were parts he wasn’t going to report because doing so would be wrong. He obviously wasn’t supposed to have this information.
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