David Frum, a senior editor at The Atlantic, ghostwrote a speech for the Israeli U.N. ambassador in 2014—at the same time as he profiled the ambassador for the magazine.
Frum’s galling, undisclosed conflict of interest was exposed via the ambassador’s hacked emails, first reported by Ryan Grim and Murtaza Hussain for Drop Site.
In 2014, Israel was in the midst of waging war in Gaza, ultimately killing over 2,200 Palestinians and wounding over 11,000. It was Israel’s most devastating campaign against the Palestinians since the 1967 war, according to UNRWA. As the country faced criticism for its conduct, allies like Frum reached out to Israeli government officials to offer their support in spinning the narrative, according to Drop Site.
In Frum’s case, he could offer more to the Israeli cause than just money or positive news coverage: Before coming to The Atlantic, he had been a speechwriter for George W. Bush.
Frum contacted Ambassador Ron Prosor on July 31, 2014, during the height of the war, in an email titled, “an earlier draft of that speech I sent you.” The speech, seemingly meant to be delivered to the U.N. Security Council, described the war as “the most tenacious challenge to the free world in decades,” and asked Americans to continue to support Israel.
Only one day before, Frum had contacted Prosor from a different email address, with a different request: to interview him for The Atlantic. The ensuing profile praised Prosor for his “toughness” and painted a sympathetic portrait of Israel as unfairly maligned on the global stage. “In many ways, and on many days, it feels as if the whole UN system is concerned with the monitoring and critiquing of one small member nation,” Frum wrote.
It’s not known whether Prosor delivered Frum’s speech at the U.N. (Frum was competing with British journalist Douglass Murray for the honor, the leak also reveals). But to secretly draft a speech for a foreign government official, all the while rapturously profiling him from a place of presumed journalistic objectivity, is an egregious ethical breach.
Frum is still at The Atlantic, where he recently published a piece arguing against recognizing Palestine as a state.
David Frum should have been put in prison 20 years ago for his involvement in the Bush administration, but instead I have to hear ignorant jackasses say stupid shit like, “Just because you don’t like his politics doesn’t mean he’s a bad guy, and he’s a really good writer! He said this one thing about how ‘conservatives will abandon democracy’ if they think they can’t win, and I’m too stupid to realize that was a threat, so I thought it was really mature and sophisticated reflection on his own party.”
Also, while I’m ranting - the modern day Atlantic magazine is an awful publication that deserves to fail if there was any justice in this world. Back in the 1800s it used to be kinda cool (they were abolitionist before it was popular), but then rich people took it over for its prestigious name and used it to platform a bunch of “just asking questions” conservative dipshits. The fact that they still have a few good writers holding on just obscures the project of legitimizing conservative asshole morons they’ve been fixated on for the last decade or so.
I didn’t know that about Frum, and don’t know much else about him in general. But I have to disagree on the Atlantic as a whole. I think good journalists can end up stuck under a shitty editor. 2 reasons I feel like they’re still a good publication despite their editor:
•As far as I know they’re the only publication that directly called out one of the executor’s of Epstein’s estate. He was being called to provide evidence to the House committee, and wanted the evidence he provided put in the Smithsonian. Which when you know who this guy is, and his ties to MAGA and Peter Thiel, sounds like a pretty blatant attempt to create revisionist history. I’m not sure what actually ended up happening with the whole Smithsonian deal (I hope it fell through), but here is the article about one of Epstein’s co-captains in his sex trafficking network that got mostly swept under the rug, but definitely deserved way more attention.
A MAGA Attorney Hired Epstein’s Lawyer for His ‘Valuable’ Experience
The law firm he now works for used to represent Trump and currently represents Hegseth, but to my knowledge hardly anyone has even followed up about this information.
•The Atlantic also published this article by Russian dissident Dina Khapaeva in 2022. Khapaeva has been trying to warn America and the entire world about Russia’s own playbook for global dominance, but has received very little press coverage.
Putin Is Just Following the Manual
The novel was written in the early 2000s by a Putin loyalist, and it not only predicted the invasion of Ukraine with great accuracy, it lays out the leader of Russia’s (who is obviously a fictionalized Putin) plan to continue the invasion through Europe and eventually capture the U.S.
Had she received more attention from other publications, perhaps more people would have at least realized that the deceased author, Mikhail Yuriev, was also one of the Russian oligarchs who donated to Mike Johnson’s bid for his Louisiana seat in 2018 by funneling money through their Texas-based American Ethane company.
So, knowing all that, I cannot shit on the Atlantic as a publication.
Yeah, I can respect where you’re coming from, but the fact that they are occasionally capable of getting it right in a way other publications don’t, and really that history of them being an abolitionist publication before the civil war when that clearly morally correct stance was very much not popular - all of that makes it feel like a huge betrayal that most of the things they publish now are either “Maybe the fascists have a good point this time” or “OK, the fascists are clearly wrong, but can we really blame them when progressives are so annoying?”
That much is definitely true and I’ve seen it a lot, but I think good journalists have an obligation at some point to realize their good work is just providing cover for a bad institution and find somewhere else to write