In advance of the 40th anniversary of the Watergate break-in, Kathleen Parker wrote a column about the harm that Nixon did to the American spirit. The part of the column that spoke most to me, though, was this:
Not incidentally, Watergate also created something else of significance — the celebrity journalist and a generation of wannabe Woodwards and Bernsteins. Those of us who found our way to newsrooms all wanted the big story, if not necessarily the movie with attendant fame and fortune. What most realized rather quickly was that journalism was more like laying bricks than leaping tall buildings. Deep Throat was just a disgusting porn flick, and The Big Story was more likely a city council debate over tax millage rates.
We couldn’t all be Woodwards and Bernsteins, it turned out, but the presumption of corruption and government as the enemy was a pervasive, defining force in newsrooms across the nation. And this force in turn helped shape a relentless cynicism that persists today even as it morphs into something else.
It has been my belief for some time that the adversarial relationship toward government — the gotcha approach — that characterized this generation of journalists did two things to tear down this republic:
- It fed the corrosive distrust and even hatred of government that that has come to characterize so much of our politics. There has been, ever since the 1770s, a strong anti-government strain in this country’s character. But after Watergate, journalists did all they could to pour gasoline on that smoldering wariness. From Ronald Reagan to the Tea Party (and on the Naderite left), it became increasingly respectable to think of government as inherently a bad thing. Since the media were saturated with stories of bad politicians and bureaucrats, readers and viewers came to believe that all who served in government were like that, which was very far from true. The process was complete when it became common for Americans to defend the wrongdoing of the pols they liked by saying, “They all do that.” Which they don’t.
- Government actually DID get worse, because increasingly good candidates refused to run for office. Normal, well-intentioned people simply will not subject themselves or their families to the perpetual third degree, a state of being in which a large portion of the world never trusts them, perpetually accuses them, and magnifies their flaws (which we all have) to an absurd degree.
What happened was a matter of degree. It has always been a legitimate part of the journalist’s job in this country to hold government accountable. It is an essential function of the Fourth Estate. And perpetual skepticism, captured in the adage “If your mother says she loves you, check it out” — was a legendary feature of the journalistic character long before 1972.
But it’s also a part of a journalist’s job to provide perspective. If it’s unusual for a politician to be a crook, and you give the public the impression that all politicians are crooks, you haven’t done your job, because you’ve presented a false picture to the reader.
At this point my colleagues will protest (as I often have myself), We’re in the news business. If it’s unusual for a politician to be a crook, then when I find a politician who IS a crook, it’s my job to report that. It is not my job to report on the 99 percent of pols who are NOT crooks, because they are not unusual, and therefore not news.
True. And even back when newspapers had a lot of space and people to fill it, resources were finite. You were pretty much out of room after you had reported on the news; you didn’t have space for the vast majority of information that was not news.
And it was ever thus. Newspaper exposes always fed a certain amount of cynicism among the public.
But as I said, it’s a matter of degree. Healthy skepticism took a slight, nasty turn after Watergate. From being a healthy part of the American character, it became a situation in which Americans thought their government was so bad, that the attitude itself was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Look at South Carolina. Today, hating government is generally considered a prerequisite for getting elected to office. And once elected, those candidates go about showing just how bad government can be.
We can blame Nixon. But the journalists who were inspired by Woodward and Bernstein played their role.
Related Posts
By the way — I count myself as a member of that generation of journalists, even though technically, I was not inspired to become a journalist by Woodward and Bernstein. I was already working at my first newspaper job — as a copy clerk at The Commercial Appeal in Memphis — when I first heard of those two guys.
But they did cast a bit of a spell on those of us entering the profession at about that time.
Oh, and Woodstein were hardly the first to do what they did. They were preceded by Sy Hersh and Jack Anderson and a host of others.
The exciting thing about Woodward and Bernstein, to a neophyte journalist at the time, was that they were small fry at the Post. Yeah, they were at a big paper in the nation’s capital, but within that world they were nobodies. They weren’t the stars, who were found on the national desk. One was a sort of metro general assignment reporter and the other covered the Virginia legislature (a prestigious job in Richmond, but not in Washington). By sheer, dogged hard work — nothing flashy about it — they uncovered a story that the stars at the paper weren’t interested in, and it became the story of the century. They became giant-killers, the little Davids who brought down a president at the height of his political power.
And it looked like if they could do it, any of us could.
Well written and thoughtful, thank you!
In honor of the 40th anniversary of Watergate, President Obama and Attorney General Holder give you Fast and Furious… or just the parts they want you to see.
And then there are those instances where journalists act as stenographers and merely recite what a given politician says as fact. That’s how we end up with debacles like Iraq.
What I recall from 40 years ago was honestly feeling our government was on the verge of a coup. But Senators Sam Ervin and Howard Baker restored my faith in checks and balances. We televised those hearings and we watched democracy work.
Perhaps we really do need to watch sausage being made to appreciate our politics. Its not pretty but it does work, maybe we should stop looking quite so close at how is works. Politics like surgery is messy to observe yet it saves lives (but most of us can’t or shouldn’t watch it.) But we can be glad good and honorable people practice both surgery and politics.
My brother, who was ten, my mother and I were glued to the TV during the hearings. My brother did go on to become a newspaperman, but a copy editor–playing gotcha to the reporters?
It seems ironic that the groups that most virulently distrust government (can you virulently distrust?) also similarly distrust the media. As ye sow, so shall ye reap?
No, Bud, that’s not the case. Nothing about my support for the invasion has anything to do with any questions not asked or any lack of information.
I realize that what you say has become axiomatic among opponents of that move. But, like “Bush lied; people died,” it’s not true.
@Lynn–As one who has seen a lot of City of Columbia sausage made, it is illuminating. The old joke is “How many people work at city hall?” “About half.”
I used to be able to tell you which half was which, but I haven’t had as much need to haunt the halls of Columbia’s government as much since Steve Gantt took over. What you see is that government is done by people. Just like people everywhere,a very few are crooks; some are incompetent; most are decent, hardworking people who don’t get enough credit or salary.
When you actually get up to speed on issues, and why things are the way they are and what would happen, intended and unintended, if things changed, you have a lot more respect for government. It’s too easy to be cynical by default. It’s not fair or useful, though.
Watergate was just the cherry on top of the sundae that was really built with the distrust in government in the wake of the Vietnam War. The free press can’t be blamed for the rise in cynicism among the public: the “accomplishments” of American government in that time deserve the lion’s share of the credit.
But in any case, Watergate was in many ways an affirmation of the system, in that the free press helped successfully expose wrongdoing, and the system worked by impeaching Nixon and essentially forcing him from office. There were many reforms during that era which were born out of the optimistic wish to correct the excesses of LBJ and Nixon (War Powers Act, Frank Church hearings, etc.). As a young teenager, I sat in rapt fascination watching the House Judiciary hearings and feeling very positive, not cynical at all about a nation that could accomplish a transition of power in that way, that no man or President was above the law.
When I entered journalism in 1969, it was a quirky business, with both morning and afternoon papers owned and managed by the same family. We had a husband and wife reporting team, my alcoholic mentor, a partially disabled city editor, a bored housewife whose husband was the photographer, a renowned community columnist whose sole motivation was obtaining freebies, a sports editor whose better days never were, an angry young man who drank his courage, and an incompetent editor known mainly for filing his fingernails and beginning each Sunday column with a reference to the red clay hills of Georgia.
News gathering was a rather genteel enterprise, somewhat motivated by steering coverage away from the occasionally embarassing personal issues of the ownership family (and their social circle) — and towards the flower shows etc that its grande dame regally presided over.
All this was prospered by the era of hot type. It actually took a great amount of physical effort to get a story into the paper — which, if you think about it, resulted in a rather bland routine. The extremes were the dusty ready-to-go galleys of lead type that — with only the addition of a date — would exhaustively report on an eventual front page the deaths of prominent personalities. I know we had one on stand-by for Jimmy Byrnes and another to announce the death of Spanish dicator Franco that allegedly sat around for more than a dozen years throughout his lingering illness.
Into this walked the leading edge of the Baby Boom, which when combined with the advent of cold type, blasted away the old complacent journalism and replaced it with a more edgy style.
Maybe influenced by W&B, the new crowd — supplemented by activist kids overwhelming journalism schools who were breaking taboos about sex and drugs — wrote about the things with which they found fault — and which had been in plain sight , ignored and accepted by the previous generation.
Best to all, to all the best, TOM
Your posting and the anniversary of Watergate could not come at a better time for objective journalistic reflection with ‘Fast and Furious’ hanging over the nation.
All that seems to be missing (but Issa allegedly has an insider source) so far is non-partisan reflection. Watergate had no body bags like F&F does, just an undeniable AG coverup.
Perhaps journalists can’t smell stink without lawyer’s approval.
OK, for the 1,000,000th time (do I win a prize?), I will ask the question:
This thing that you think the media isn’t reporting on — how did you learn about it?
Fast and Furious hanging over the nation?? Seriously. That was a well-intentioned, but poorly executed project to try and uncover the perpetrators of an illegal gun-running operation. And by the way this was initiated by the Bush Administration. The contempt charge against AG Holder is nothing but a GOP hatchet job.
Brad, is everyone who tells something to someone considered “media”? Is FitsNews “media”? What about online forums?
@SDII–Any medium that transmits news, using the plural, be the media. Blogs are media, electronic signs are media, pamphlets are media.
@Brad–Excellent point!
That’s close to what I was going to say. My own answer: Any means for conveying information is a “medium” in this sense of the word. “Media” is, of course, the plural form of the word.
Technically, a private letter or email or text is a medium. But the term is usually used to refer to mass media, which traditionally has been shared in a one-way process with a large audience. A modern variant of this is social media, which is interactive and on some level selective.
A blog is a social medium, although it is actually sort of a hybrid between traditional mass media and the purer forms of social media, such as Twitter and Facebook.
“And by the way this was initiated by the Bush Administration.”…bud
Yes, the Bush administration did have a program called “Project Gunrunner” that was used to apprehend “straw purchasers” of weapons intended to be taken across the border into Mexico. The difference is that once the purchase was made, the “straw purchasers” were arrested and the weapons were not allowed to leave the country, unlike the fiasco undertaken by the Obama administration. It started in 2006 and abandoned in 2007.
The Bush administration also had another program to catch arms dealers. The program was called “Operation Wide Receiver” and so far, nine arrests have been made and two guilty pleas.
The difference? Fast and Furious allowed the guns to leave the country, no arrests have been made and the guns under Fast and Furious have been connected to multiple murders so far, including a US border agent.
Heck, they could set a mouse trap with the best cheese in the world as bait and still not catch a mouse. Then, they would blame the trap, the cheese, and finally, the Bush administration for the construction of the trap and processing the cheese.
No, the hatchet job was done by the Obama administration via Holder when they tried to equate a program that did not result in the deaths of innocents to the one they are responsible for.
Bush did it! Bush did it! Bush did it! Bush did it! the Obama administration and supporters screamed as usual when they screw something up royally.
Damn, Bush has been out of office for almost 4 years now. When will this administration ever take responsibility for anything and not blame the dog for “eating their homework”? Never I guess. Like Linus, “Blame Bush” is their security blanket and if they ever lose it, they fall apart like the proverbial cheap watch.
@Kathryn – Technically yes, but you need to read this like as in regular conversation not as a legal argument.
@Bart, you are correct that especially in the case of F&F, pointing to the mistakes of the Bush Administration is a woefully pathetic defense. This is not like the economy, where the “centrifugal force” or momentum of economic mistakes take some time to be reversed. Obama could have reversed the Project Gunrunner or Operation Wide Receiver at any point and did not do so.
One correction, though, Bart: Operation Wide Receiver (another predecessor to F&F) DID allow guns to cross the border.
However, just because Bush was wrong to pursue this operation is no justification for Obama’s continuing and compounding the error. And of course, there’s a much larger issue here, which is that all those who stubbornly refuse to even consider decriminalizing certain drugs and placing them within a regulated market structure (going against the strong recommendations of the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy, the advice of former Presidents of Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia) bear some responsibility for the blood that’s been shed.
In that larger sense, something like Operation F&F is really essentially doubling down on stupidity. This war on drugs has been going on for how long, now? When, when, when will we ever learn?
One thing I don’t understand, is this late into Obama’s first term and when anything goes wrong it’s “Bush’s fault”. But when things go right regardless of when it happened, it’s Nobel Peace Prize winner Obama’s accomplishment.
I blame Bill Clinton. 🙂
I support President Obama, but I think the administration is wrong on this, especially in refusing to cooperate. Sounds like something our governors would do.
“This thing that you think the media isn’t reporting on — how did you learn about it?” -BW
A cousin of mine is a well-connected lawyer in the capital area. After he informed his contacts, I began searching for the story. Drudge had it first again as far as I was able to find.
As mainstream print media and major networks dragged their feet on related breaking news it became apparent that the only journalists investigating had apparently signed book deals for public non-disclosure, or were as you have termed them, “extremists”.
When I broached the potential scandal on this blog months ago, the reaction was dismissive and the topic marginalized. Why else, Brad?
I was already weekending at a daily and in J-school when Watergate occurred, so my path was set already. The next year the school (Missouri) was flooded with starry-eyed Woodstein wannabes. Most went into TV.
“Fast and Furious” is such a conspiracy wet dream that it would be irresponsible for the mainstream media to give it credence. I still can’t figure out how Obama convinced Bush in 2006 to murder a border agent. The bottom line though, is a serious notion — do you believe that the country’s attorney general, of whatever administration, should be independent, or should the AG be a lackey of the House of Representatives?
In no way am I suggesting Bush is responsible for the bungling in the Fast and Furious operation. What I am suggesting is that the Bush administration was conducting similar operations in order to address the illegal gun running activities therefore it was established as government policy that this activity was in the national interest.
The Obama adminstration essentially agreed. Given the poor results of the Bush program Obama took this to a higher, and riskier level. This bold approach is a recurring theme of the Obama administration but in this case it failed.
We can all agree that these are the facts. But the Isa committee can’t just acknowledge this as a bungled attempt to stop the serious problem of gun running. Instead they view it as an opportunity to go after the AG and POTUS in a political way. There is no reason to believe F and F is an illegal operation given the established precident of the previous administration. Therefore the only conclusion we can reach is this is a Republican witch hunt.
“One correction, though, Bart: Operation Wide Receiver (another predecessor to F&F) DID allow guns to cross the border.”…Phillip
Phillip,
You are correct. Operation Wide Receiver did allow guns to cross the border. The difference in the two programs was that one was intended to target “straw purchasers” of guns and the other was to target arms dealers. Slight but importance difference in the overall scheme of things in the world of illegal weapons.
However, at this point, the objective of the programs is questionable at best, a disaster at the worst. After doing more research on the subject, the political implications of the programs is palpable and both sides of the aisle have to share responsibility for the blood of innocents spilled by the sale of weapons to “straw purchasers” and arms dealers alike.
The eTrace program intended to aid and to follow the origins of ownership of a gun was made available to several countries. If the sources are correct, the list of countries with access to gun ownership records in the US via eTrace is rather long. Mexico, Columbia, Suriname, Tobago, Gunana, Canada, Germany, Bahama, Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Barbados, Anguilla, Antigua, Barbuda, Aruba, Curacao, Britain, Australia, Japan, and Belgium to name a few. So far, eTrace has not been an effective tool in the arms trade business.
Several members of the AFT disagreed with the programs and rightfully so. They are ineffective and did nothing to reduce or restrict the flow of weapons to other countries, especially Mexico. Then, Mexico in a moment of absolute hubris dared to place sole blame on the US for the illegal arms crossing the border. One must ask the question, where the hell were your border agents when weapons were being smuggled into your country? We should shoulder our share of the blame but at the same time, do we continue to bear the burden of all evil because other countries refuse to enforce their own laws? Maybe if Mexico would place importance on keeping drugs from “leaving” or firearms from “entering”, fiascos like the mentioned programs might not be necessary.
After all, when has any “brilliant” idea or program emanating from the minds of politicians and career bureaucrats ever borne the fruit promised?
From an “extremist” law professor:
“The only way to beat an executive privilege claim is by court order. To take this issue to court, the full House must vote to hold Holder in contempt of Congress, then—when federal prosecutors predictably inform the House that they will not prosecute their boss—the full House must pass a second resolution authorizing Rep. Darrell Issa to file suit in the U.S. District Court for D.C. on behalf of the entire U.S. House.
Holder will lose the court fight. He’ll appeal, of course, but eventually the appeals will be over, and we’ll all learn the truth of what really happened in Fast and Furious.
And whom to hold accountable.”
Now, Burl B., where do you stand on important concepts like federal government transparency versus using dismissive street jargon to dodge being judged the same partisan who once asked what personal information candidate Obama had ever withheld from the public?
By now, some of us hope you have learned what those bulky Obama omissions were, or do you think they are just another “conspiracy wet dream that it would be irresponsible for the mainstream media to give it credence”?
Intelligent readers may wish to know whether they can give things you spout any credence.
Bart, that is an extreme over generalization. Not sure where this notion that ONLY business people have “brilliant” ideas. Just remember it was business minds that gave us New Coke, the Pontiac Aztek and the pet rock.
@Burl–If the Executive Branch may have done something illegal, who should investigate this? Isn’t this akin to the Watergate investigation?
Juan, what is there to fight over? Holder has already conceded there were errors made in F and F. And he’s turned over thousands of documents to that effect. If you’re going to hide something wouldn’t it help to hide the embarrasing details? This is nothing but a witch hunt plain and simple. I think the courts will throw this out pretty quickly.
As for the political ramifications I don’t see much either way. There are only a miniscule number of voters who would make up their mind. Of that very tiny group there are a few that will see this as the administration not cooperating with congress. On the other side there are those who believe this to be a congressional witch hunt. The later probably outnumber the former slightly. But at the end of the day it will be mostly a wash.
“Bart, that is an extreme over generalization. Not sure where this notion that ONLY business people have “brilliant” ideas. Just remember it was business minds that gave us New Coke, the Pontiac Aztek and the pet rock.”…bud
bud, you are correct that each one of the ideas you mentioned were failures but then again, they do not meet the same criteria as Fast and Furious, Operation Wide Receiver, or Project Gunrunner. Another failure placed at the feet of politicians and bureaucrats was the mishandling of the post-invasion of Iraq. An incompetent administrator screwed things up royally. Even the novice business person realizes that when you take over a new company, you must retain the older employees with experience long enough to make a successful transition unless you plan to shut the business down immediately.
But, now that you mention it, I think a politician or government bureaucrat was responsible for the New Coke, Pontiac Aztek and the pet rock. 🙂
@ bud–FWIW–New Coke was not an obvious whiff. I remember reading about all of it in the WSJ as it went down.They tested it repeatedly–Coke drinkers in blind taste tests actually preferred Pepsi, so Coke reformulated Coke to taste like what people actually liked. The uproar over it was just like Brad’s post on how smart people are harder to convince that they’re wrong.
@Bart–Again, FWIW, I read many, many times in the WSJ about folks who bought a business and did not retain experienced people–to their detriment, to be sure, but…I even rep’d folks who could not be convinced to lock up experienced people contractually. Oy!
New Coke was all about how to switch to high fructose corn syrup and not lose loyal customers. Change the recipe so it causes an uproar among those who won’t drink anything but Coke knowing it will fail, then have marketing advertise that you are bringing back the “original” Coke, but using the cheaper sweetener. Loyal customers are happy and the bean counters are happier because they can cut production costs.
… and if you want a REAL Coke Classic, what you do is walk into one of the local tiendas and ask, preferably in Spanish, for a Mexican Coke.
Then you’ll get the actual real thing, made with cane sugar.
@Kathryn,
Agreed with your comments about articles in the WSJ. Too often when a business is bought out, the new owners want to imprint their own brand immediately, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!!! I never intended my remarks to imply that ALL business owners are intelligent enough to realize the importance of retaining essential personnel.
SDII is right on the money behind the change in the Coke formula. It was a well planned marketing strategy and it worked. A former colleague worked for Coke corporate at the time and they were prepared for the storm that ensued. Pepsi was starting to make significant inroads in the market and Coke needed to do something to renew interest in their product.
Deseo una Coca-Cola hecho en Mexico…
(Not sure whether I got the idiom right there…)
Or go to Sams’s Club or Walmart and buy it by the case. Sam’s Club is about $18 for a 24 bottle case, Walmart has it for $1.50/bottle.
and, again, blind tests show most people cannot tell the difference between cane-sugar-sweetened cola and HFCS-sweetened cola.
I wonder about why someone would buy an existing business and not default to keeping the people who make it worth buying. Sure, some need to go, but if you are making a clean sweep, why not start from scratch? (Assuming you are buying the business and not just the physical assets.)