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JNKumar
@jnkumar.bsky.social
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Sign up for the daily CJR newsletter. Over here at the SPCJ (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Journalists), we love to highlight journalism done by the young pups in the business, from a wonderful investigative site in Nebraska to a feisty startup in Washington, DC. But the past few days, we’ve seen tremendous reporting from top mainstream outlets, so we want to offer our praise to them—because big old dogs also like a scratch behind the ears now and then. We’ll start with Bloomberg News, which uncovered a transcript of the meeting that Steve Witkoff, who is President Trump’s golf pal and itinerant diplomat, had with Yuri Ushakov, Vladimir Putin’s top foreign-policy adviser. Witkoff spent much of the time explaining how Putin can flatter Trump by praising his diplomatic skills, as evidenced by the Gaza deal: ”I would make the call and just reiterate that you congratulate the president on this achievement, that you supported it, that you respect that he is a man of peace and you’re just, you’re really glad to have seen it happen.” Ushakov takes Witkoff’s advice to heart: “Hey Steve, I agree with you that he will congratulate, he will say that Mr. Trump is a real peace man and so-and-so. That he will say.” Witkoff also offers his plan for carving up disputed territory: “Now, me to you, I know what it’s going to take to get a peace deal done: Donetsk and maybe a land swap somewhere.” For anyone who wonders how the US will manufacture a peace deal in Ukraine, the transcript was a revelation. We got to peer inside the diplomatic process, in a way that is usually reserved for State Department cables that are declassified only decades after the event. And while we’d like to be able to congratulate the reporter(s) by name, the byline says only this: “By Bloomberg News.” That is likely due to the need to protect sources, or methods, or both. If so, that’s an understandable trade-off, given the importance of the scoop. So that was a great bit of reporting…
December 5, 2025 at 2:17 PM