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IMAGINE WATERGATE 2005
by Richard Reeves

It was the persistence and courage of the press that made the difference 30 years ago [during Watergate]. Above and behind the often confused and sometimes inaccurate young men were the publisher of the Post, Katharine Graham, and her editor, Ben Bradlee, who hung tough when it counted. Would that happen today?

I seriously doubt it. Under today’s rules of the game, Nixon would have survived the rape of the Constitution and various counts of burglary and perjury. The American press is being driven into the ground like a stake by courts and government attorneys arguing that there is no such thing as constitutional recognition of any legal protections of news-gathering.

The American press is barely being protected by its own owners, many of them entertainment corporations prone to erase any facts inconvenient to those who write tax laws and approve mergers and acquisitions. The straight American press, and most of it is, is being nibbled to death by a Greek chorus of know-nothing mouthpieces mocking anyone brazen enough to question the orthodoxy of the day or the cut of the emperor’s wardrobe.

Imagine Watergate 2005, with Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly preaching their sermons on the patriotism of a 29-year-old reporter who was close to being fired for forgetting where he abandoned rental cars (private property) and whose parents were both communists — that would be Carl Bernstein. Disney and Viacom and Fox have their virtues, I’m sure, but they are no Graham and Bradlee. Graham bet the company on journalism. I think she would be laughed off the business pages today — and, in fact, over a lifetime she did decide to (or have to) plead for Wall Street’s forgiveness for her own brave brand of Americanism.

Now the laughers are in charge. In the last year, the White House has explicitly stated that it believes it has no obligation to deal with the press as anything but another special interest. In the past week, federal judges have ruled that Time magazine and New York Times reporters should go to jail for what they know, even if it was never published. Another federal court ruled that the governor of Maryland has the right to order state employees never to answer questions posed by The Baltimore Sun.

So it goes in the land of the free.