Watergate's Legacy and the Press: The Investigative Impulse

Abstract

Nearly forty years after the Watergate break-in, the legacy of that scandal continues to cast a shadow on politics and the press in Washington, D.C. How did this happen? What role did journalism play in President Richard M. Nixon's resignation? What changes in investigative reporting preceded and followed Watergate? And what does this portend for the future? These are the questions addressed in this lucid, well-researched book. In truth, journalism's precise role in Nixon's demise is impossible to measure definitively. To the conservative writer Paul Johnson, the “Watergate witch-hunt” was “run by liberals in the media,” especially the Washington Post, and led to “the first media Putsch in history”. The television anchorman Dan Rather also viewed the media's role as pivotal—but heroic: “The record clearly shows that the [Watergate] cover-up would have worked if the press hadn’t done its job.” Academics hold a more jaundiced view. “Television and newspapers publicized the story and, perhaps, even encouraged more diligent investigation,” the historian Stanley Kutler found, but media revelations of crimes and political misdeeds repeated what was already known to properly constituted investigative authorities. In short, carefully timed leaks, not media investigations, provided the first news of Watergate.