How Would Watergate Be Reported Today?

If Watergate happened today, would the story be reported? If so, by whom? And would you believe what you read, or saw or heard about it? Let those questions slip into the background for a bit and consider how two writers from the New Yorker view the media.

Said one: "The public trust in newspapers has been slipping at least as quickly as the bottom line. A recent study published by Sacred Heart University found that fewer than twenty per cent of Americans said they could believe 'all or most' media reporting, a figure that has fallen from more than twenty seven percent just five years ago."

Said the other: "I think that anybody who talks often with people about newspapers nowadays must be impressed by the growing distrust of the information they contain. There is less a disposition to accept what they say than to try to estimate the probable truth on the basis of what they say, like aiming a rifle that has a deviation to the right."

The first quote is from Eric Alterman, writing in the March 31, 2008 edition of the New Yorker, and got me thinking about Watergate. The second is from A.J. Liebling, the magazine's press critic from 1935 to 1963, and came in an essay (although not in the magazine) in 1947.

This crisis of the press has been a long time coming, more of a slow-motion train wreck over decades than a violent collision that has just taken place. The sad part is that it is the journalists and their owners who are driving the train. The sadder part is that we, our society, are the passengers on board.

We like to think of the 1970s as a golden age of journalism. The Washington Post (and later the New York Times) exposed Watergate. The Times (and later the Post) printed the Pentagon Papers in defiance of the Nixon Administration. Before that, Edward R. Murrow on CBS exposed the poison of Sen. Joe McCarthy in 1954, albeit when McCarthy was in his decline.

But we sometimes forget how lonely the Post was for months as it was the only paper on the story, and other news organizations woudn't touch it. And we forget the sainted Murrow was eventually driven out of CBS after it couldn't stand the pressure. Sound familiar? To Dan Rather and Mary Mapes, it should.

Alterman is right to chronicle the decline of the news business. But as we saw in the run up to the Iraq war, reporters for the big news organizations gave the public every reason to distrust them. Stories about the evils of rendition and the conditions at Walter Reed are excellent, but they still pale in comparison to the lack of good reporting, and the wrong reporting, which helped drive us into the war.

Reporters were afraid to ask the questions of figures of authority, editors were caught up in the tide of the times and reporters who raised the contrary view were ignored or had their stories shuffled off to page A-nowhere if they were printed at all. Even those good stories that were printed from regional chains, like the fabulous work by the McClatchy (nee Knight Ridder) bureau were ignored.

Which is more typical of the media, the Bob Woodward who reported Watergate, or the Bob Woodward who metamorphosed into Bush's Court Reporter, trading facts for access?

Paul Farhi of the Post, writing in the American Journalism Review, brought together the ages of Liebling and Alterman: "Every presidential campaign of recent memory has produced its share of Dewey-Defeats-Truman press embarrassments, but Campaign '08 has been particularly rich in bogus media narratives. Ever since the races began in earnest last year, the blown calls have just kept on coming. Many of the storylines around which the political press has pegged its coverage haven't even come close to falling within a reasonable margin of error."

Combine the unwillingness of the journalistic enterprises with the most resources to challenge authority with the willingness of said enterprises to consider themselves as insider founts of wisdom, and it's not hard to believe that Watergate would go largely uncovered. It took a lot, more reporting than one can imagine today if you weren't around then, for the story to progress from a police-beat Metro story of a "third rate burglary" to a political story that challenged the authority of a president who was overwhelmingly reelected. That's the part that it would be hard for the online news organizations, even the most dedicated ones, to duplicate.

There is a lot to be said for the rise of political blogs. They give voices to many people who wouldn't be chosen to occupy one of the half-dozen columns on the op-ed page of a newspaper and yet who have worthy things to say. They are in that sense a value-added product. Should a Watergate story be reported somewhere other than in a major newspaper, the blogs would keep it alive. But a contest between the influence of the blogs, even the ones that do reporting, and the historical timidity of the large press is no contest at all.

There are many reasons for the continued decline of the journalistic establishment. Failure to adapt to changes in society is one. It's not only the rise of the Internet. Long before that, cities and towns changed from industrial economies in which the morning shift at the factory could support an evening paper to big commuter suburbs which prevented newspapers from getting beyond city limits in a timely fashion. Newspapers bought radio stations. They bought television stations. They finally got into the Internet age, although today's failure to find the value to advertisers of going online is only another contributing reason to the descent.

Perhaps the technological barriers could be overcome. Perhaps newspapers will make the mechanical transitions they need to make. But until people regain trust in what they read (and what they see, for that matter), the rest is superfluous, and the long, slow decline will continue regardless of the medium through which information is conveyed. Watergate should be the rule. Instead, it all too often has been, and will likely be, the exception.

Comments

[beachbob]

Hey, Leon, good article as always. But you need to dwell more on the impact of media deregulation, specifically the cross-ownership rules. That's where the slide started. Remember when the networks and newspapers were self-owned corporate entities? Not anymore, as I'm sure you know well.

BTW, say hi to Lizard for me...

[JaneaneTheAcerbicGoblin]

The MSM would report the Watergate break in as good for Republicans, then go on to say that the Democrats made Nixon do it.

[kettletop]

Recently we found that the Bush adminsistration was tapping ALL of our phones.
I have always thought that "for the Good of the Nation" that the Bushies would do all they could to keep the "right People" in power.
The media has already given a pass on so many things these days...Iraq for one--a really big on.

[BongWater]

This is a great article, thanks Art Brodsky.

There is another layer to the Watergate onion that is rarely looked at because we are STILL too uncomfortable talking about it.

The ties between Nixon, the Bush crime family and the assassinations of both Kennedy brothers.

There is much evidence that the break in happened because Nixon believed that Democrats had some proof of this at their Watergate office.

Funny how no one ever seems to look into the the question of why the break in occurred in the first place. Looking for Democratic election strategies in the top secret Democratic party play book? Please. Very little value compared to the risk involved.

Loads of bullshit and extreme conspiracy stuff out there on the Kennedy assassinations makes it a bit of a walk in the swamp. But if you use your logic and dig around with google, you might be amazed at the mountains of evidence linking Bush and others to it all. Watergate was very likely part of this web of lies.

[TommyMcCarthy]

"BongWater".....(with all due respect .....an unfortunate screen name for a conspiracy theorist)......
Brings up an interesting point................The idea that the burgalers were dispatched to the Watergate just to get a peek at the DNC's secret game plan for a Nov. landslide was always completely implausible...at least to me......

Kennedy assasination? Hard telling..........one thing's for sure... Liddy and the Cubans were looking for something a lot more serious than the "top secret" deliberations of the Democratic National Committee.

Nowadays, of course, such deliberations are instantly available on the internet...even before the "top secret" meetings have adjourned.

Anyone familiar with this year's Presidential campaign and the Michigan and Florida primary debacles can EASILY see that the DNC poses even LESS of a threat to Republicans today than it did in 1972. Regards..............................................................................tm

[dadw5boys]

Nixion would be giving the Cubans the Medal of Freedom like Bush gives his friends.

[jqcitizen]

Newspapers, Radio and Tv stations (MSM) cannot exist without advertising and subscribers. When corporations own movie studios, breakfast cereal and soda pop manufacturing plants as well as countless other diverse products. Who gets the advertising money? That is correct. The same corporation that owns your TV station, one or two of your radio stations and a large circulation Newspaper. Not to mention the International satellite TV monopoly.

The Federal Communications Communication (FCC) at one time regulated such monopolistic propaganda machines and today seems to be on the corporate payroll too.

[TXfemmom]

Watergate would never have become Watergate in the news climate of today. They could have traced it right to Nixon's mouth, he would have declared that it was a lie, and being a Republican, he would have gone about his merry way and the MSM would have shut up and never had the nerve to pursue it.

Look at the McCain thing with the lobbyist. There is a butt load of evidence and things which should be hounded about and explored and reported about that and they made barely a whimper. McCain came out and told them to shut up and they did so.

[EspritDeVoltaire]

The Watergate story would only be news today if "the plumbers" were hookers.

[pmag88]

In fairness to the press, we should take into consideration the sheer magnitude of information warranting investigation which the Bush administration has generated.
It could be argued that the Bush administration have employed a 'blitzkrieg' approach to jamming the media and the investigative bodies which might normally have done a better job representing the people"s interests. Also take into consideration that directly after 9/11, people in the press and some in the Democratic Party were "anthraxed", ostensibly to stifle deeper investigations into the failings leading up to 9/11 and to stifle dissent against the legislation which followed.
That said, I feel there is more than enough evidence to warrant the current criticism of the press this article alludes to.

The best and only solution is to elect a good president and congress and set about creating the right balance of regulation needed to restore oversight and accountability. If not, America is doomed.

[InofTouch]

It will still be reported but it be more politicise and the only way it would be save is if there were and are facts...So it make the arguement clear and unbias.

Still I'm more intrested if Nixon wasn't pardon by Ford....how much examples would be brought today...because I still believe that as much as were divided today, it was as bad(persay) as it was back then.

[VicPerry]

Who needs to be hypothetical? We know way worse stuff than Watergate has been going on all decade long (got all day?), but with the Vichy Democrats busy doin' nothin' there is no ceiling on what the Bush Administration can get away with.

[realpolitic]

Good point! Today, Watergate would be looked at as entertainment. Pundits would let ideologues from the far left and right scream at each other. Fox News would scream, "traitor!" Any information that came forward would be described as partisan that helps Democrats, instead of looked at as helping the country. News is a wrestling match today, especially political news. Their are good guys and bad guys. The referee (the press) may as well not even be in the ring. The litmus test for how the press has declined is to be found, as the author suggets, in Bob Woodward. He and Carl Bernstein were the seminal Watergate reporters. Recently, he ended up defending the Bush administration in the Valeria Plame CIA outing. It is amazing what a few years and a few dollars later will do.

[BatedBreath]

If it were published it would be on the Internet by bloggers.

[InofTouch]

really, most current scandles like Mark Foley were broken online but by the mainstream online site, which was ABC News.?

[billydog]

Rush Limbaugh told his audience not to watch the MSM 15 years ago because the MSM is so biased for liberals and that his listeners should get their news from him only to make sure it was 100% biased towards what shit Limbaugh was selling.

[laylahb]

Watergate would end up on American Idol. The operatives would compete against each other, and we would text in our scores. Simon, Paula and Randy would judge them on their criminal agility. The contest would come down to the two lowest-of -the-low, who would duke it out in a pit. The loser would go to Club Fed and the winner would be acquited. The loser 's sentence would be commuted by Dubbyah the following week.