As information organizations scrambled in 2017 to fulfill the bottomless urge for food for details about the brand new president, James Goldston, the president of ABC Information, declared the daybreak of “a brand new golden age” in American journalism, with Donald J. Trump as its inconceivable catalyst.
Mr. Goldston, a local of Britain who had change into a U.S. citizen only some months earlier than, mentioned the world was ready with anticipation to see what would occur subsequent. “One of many issues that makes this story so attention-grabbing,” he mentioned in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, “is no one is aware of the place this goes.”
Few, together with Mr. Goldston, foresaw that the story would come with a violent mob’s assault on the U.S. Capitol.
That siege is now his focus — however not as a community information chief. As an alternative, Mr. Goldston helps congressional investigators retell and reframe the occasions of that day for a weary and polarized nation. With a handful of manufacturing workers, it’s his job to sift by means of and edit down a voluminous quantity of photos from police physique cams, hallway surveillance video and uncooked footage from a documentarian — hours and hours of recordings that captured the rebellion because it unfolded. He and his crew will assist the Home committee that’s investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, assault produce TV-ready segments for all its public hearings, the subsequent one on Monday morning.
Greater than 20 million Individuals watched Mr. Goldston’s hand at work in the course of the committee’s nationally televised listening to on Thursday night. They noticed tightly edited video of rioters smashing by means of home windows, and two composed witnesses who recounted the destruction and mayhem — viewing that felt extra made-for-TV than most congressional hearings.
Learn Extra on the Jan. 6 Home Committee Hearings
Mr. Goldston, 53, rose within the tv information ranks as a producer, finally getting the highest job at ABC Information, a place he held for seven years till stepping down in early 2021. His work for the committee started in latest weeks, individuals with data of its actions mentioned.
Reached by telephone on Friday, Mr. Goldston mentioned he couldn’t converse publicly about what he was doing for the committee.
His work has drawn the ire of Republicans, who’ve questioned whether or not the committee bypassed congressional guidelines by bringing him on with out giving correct discover. The Republican Home chief, Consultant Kevin McCarthy, has accused Democrats of hiring Mr. Goldston “to choreograph their Jan. 6 political theater.”
At ABC Information, Mr. Goldston helped oversee the evolution of a conventional broadcast information division — residence to stars like Diane Sawyer, Peter Jennings and Sam Donaldson — into a spot with extra mass enchantment that drew rankings away from rivals like NBC. Chiseled-jaw anchors and correspondents have been in. Tales that Mr. Goldston deemed too uninteresting have been out. One former government who labored with him recalled that the worst factor a producer or correspondent may hear him say a few story was that it was “boring.”
Mr. Goldston left his first main imprint on ABC Information as an government producer by reworking “Nightline,” the high-minded, late-night newscast hosted by Ted Koppel, a veteran of Washington protection who left the present in 2005. Beneath Mr. Goldston, the “Nightline” set moved from Washington to New York, and it turned a breezier program that was much less targeted on politics and coverage and aimed to compete extra with David Letterman and Jay Leno, who hosted reveals in the identical 11:35 p.m. slot.
The revamping was a rankings success at the same time as some critics complained that the present spent an excessive amount of time on popular culture figures like Michael Jackson, whose loss of life in 2009 it coated extensively. Inside ABC, Mr. Goldston was credited with saving “Nightline” from cancellation.
Mr. Goldston’s former colleagues mentioned that when he took the helm as president of ABC Information in 2014 he remodeled a newsroom tradition that was typically deferential to high correspondents and created a extra top-down construction that empowered senior producers and executives.
Beneath his management, ABC Information made a number of modifications that signaled a tradition shift. When Ms. Sawyer stepped down as anchor of “World Information Tonight” in 2014, a number of months shy of her 69th birthday, Mr. Goldston named David Muir, who was 40, to exchange her. He introduced the favored daytime discuss present “The View” beneath the purview of the information division and away from ABC’s extra entertainment-focused daytime unit.
Mr. Goldston had comparatively few direct dealings with Mr. Trump through the years. However like most high-level information executives, he has recalled being on the receiving finish of an occasional telephone name from him — primarily to complain about protection. In 2019, the 2 sat collectively on the similar desk for a dinner in London honoring Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall.
When he spoke at a Canadian media convention in early 2017, Mr. Goldston described the Trump presidency as double-edged. It was dangerous, he mentioned, to be known as the “enemy of the individuals.” Nevertheless it had additionally given journalists “a real readability of goal about what we do.”
