It wouldn’t be a major Watergate anniversary without prominent references to the heroic-journalist myth — that risible, media-centric view that the Washington Post’s reporting exposed the crimes that brought down Richard Nixon’s presidency.
Risible?
For sure.
Not exactly, Jerry Ford
Not even the Post’s Watergate principals embraced the heroic-journalist interpretation. As Bob Woodward, one of the newspaper’s lead Watergate reporters, proclaimed in an interview in 2004:
“To say that the press brought down Nixon, that’s horse shit.”
Such pointed disclaimers notwithstanding, the myth seems as robust as ever in the run-up to next week’s 50th anniversary of the break-in at the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. The burglary touched off a spiraling scandal.
Any more, even the Post drinks the heroic-journalist Kool-Aid.
For example, in its obituary the other day about Barry Sussman, the newspaper’s Watergate editor who died June 1, the Post said of…
View original post 684 more words
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
Recent Comments