When the news organization scrambled to meet the bottomless desire for information about the new president in 2017, ABC News president James Goldston took Donald J. Trump as its unlikely catalyst to the United States. Declared the dawn of a “new golden age” in the journalism of. ..
Goldston from the United Kingdom, who became a US citizen just a few months ago, said the world is waiting for what’s next. “One of the things that makes this story so interesting,” he said. Interview with The Hollywood Reporter“No one knows where this goes”
Few, including Mr. Goldston, foresaw that the story would include a violent mob attack on the US Capitol.
That siege is now his focus, but not as a network news chief. Instead, Mr Goldston is helping Congressional investigators re-tell and reconstruct what happened that day for an exhausted and polarized country. With several production staff, his job is to screen and edit vast amounts of images from police body cams, corridor surveillance videos, and live footage from documentaries. He and his team will help the House Commission investigating the January 6, 2021 attack create a television-enabled segment at all hearings on Monday morning.
Over 20 Million Americans I saw Mr Goldston’s hands working at a committee hearing that aired nationwide on Thursday night. They saw a heavily edited video of a riot breaking through a window and two composed witnesses who talked about destruction and mayhem. This is a viewing that felt more for television than for most Congressional hearings.
Read more about the January 6 House Committee hearing
Goldston, 53, went up to the TV News ranks as a producer and eventually took the top position on ABC News. Go down His work for the Commission began in the last few weeks, people with knowledge of its behavior said.
Goldston called on Friday and said he couldn’t publicly talk about what he was doing for the commission.
His work aroused the wrath of Republicans. question Whether the Commission circumvented the rules of Congress by bringing him in without proper notice. Republican leader Kevin McCarthy has accused Democrats of hiring Mr Goldston “to choreograph the January 6 political theater.”
In ABC News, Goldston will move to a place where the traditional broadcast news division, home to stars such as Diane Sawyer, Peter Jennings and Sam Donaldson, will appeal to more people than rivals such as NBC. Helped to oversee evolution. It contained a deeply carved chin anchor and correspondent. There was no story that Mr Goldston thought was too dull. One of the former executives who worked with him remembered that the worst thing producers and correspondents could hear about him was that it was “boring.”
Goldston left the first major trace as an executive producer on ABC News, Ted Koppel, A veteran of the Washington press who left the show in 2005. Under Mr. Goldston, the “Nightline” set moved from Washington to New York, which became a more open program aimed at more competition, with less focus on politics and policy the same afternoon. David Letterman and Jay Leno who hosted the show at 11:35.
Remodeling Successful evaluation Michael Jackson’s 2009 death was extensively covered, even though some critics complained that the show spent too much time on pop culture figures like Michael Jackson. Inside ABC, Goldston allegedly saved the “nightline” from cancellation.
Goldston’s former colleague said when he became president of ABC News. In 2014 He transformed the newsroom culture, which often respects top correspondents, and created a more top-down structure that empowers senior producers and executives.
Under his leadership, ABC News has made some changes that indicate cultural change. When Sawyer resigned as an anchor for World News Tonight in 2014, her 69th birthday, Goldston, was shy for months. Named David Muir, 40, succeeded her. He put the popular daytime talk show “The View” under the jurisdiction of the news department, away from ABC’s more entertainment-focused daytime units.
Goldston has had relatively few direct deals with Trump over the years. But, like most high-level news executives, he remembered being on the receiving side of occasional calls from him, primarily to complain about the press. In 2019, the two sat together at the same table and had dinner in London in honor of Prince Charles, Camilla and the Duchess of Cornwall.
When speaking at a media conference in Canada in early 2017, Goldston described President Trump as double-edged. He said it was harmful to be called an “enemy of the people”. But it also gave journalists “a true clear purpose for what we are doing.”
