Who told Barry Sussman, the WaPo's city editor, to keep digging?
Who told Harry Rosenfeld, the Post's managing editor for D.C. metro news to back Woodstein against Editor Ben Bradlee's decision to bring in older, more experienced reporters once the size of the story became clearer?
How informed and involved was Post Publisher, President and Chair, Katharine Graham?
What did her remarks at CIA headquarters in 1988 mean:
need to know, and shouldn't. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take
legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it
knows."
and what do they mean for corporate media in 2023?
So many questions.
From the Brownstone Institute, January 8:
I was just a kid, but I’m old enough to remember Watergate. As I grew older, I learned more specific details about this historic event. Here’s my Watergate takeaway, which I think is the accepted “narrative” on this historic event:
Watergate was the biggest political scandal of the century. The fallout or denouement caused President Nixon to resign from office and sent several “conspirators” to prison.
It also made Woodward and Bernstein the most famous journalists of all time.
Few people had heard of these journalists when they began compiling relevant facts about the original Watergate crime and obligatory cover-up, but this changed over the span of about two years.
Based in part on these two journalists doing their jobs, Congressional officials decided to also do their jobs and before you knew it, most of the sordid story was known to the world.
Woodward and Bernstein, who were already minor celebrities, really cashed in with the publication of their best-selling book All the President’s Men, which was adapted into an Academy Award-winning movie starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman, two of the biggest stars of our era.
After filling their mantles with every journalism prize, the Washington Post scribes parlayed this fame and success into a lifetime of speaking gigs. By “breaking” the Watergate scandal, they also acquired the panache that allowed them to play leading roles in future investigations that resulted in even more best-selling books.
Today, the names of both journalists are literally in the history books, where their journalistic accomplishments will live forever.
Every ambitious journalist who followed wanted to be the next Woodward and Bernstein and break some huge scandal that might elevate them onto a similar professional pedestal.
The employer of Woodward and Bernstein, the Washington Post, built most of its reputation on the fact it was the newspaper that did more than any other to expose Watergate.
So … It pays handsomely – directly and indirectly with benefits that will last a lifetime – to be the journalists or news organization that breaks the “scandal of the century.”
Which leads to THE question: Given all of the above, why doesn’t any journalist, editor or publisher want to be the next Woodward and Bernstein when it comes to Covid scandals?
The Covid scandals that could be exposed by an enterprising journalist(s) are vastly larger and more important than those involving Watergate.
To cite one difference … nobody died in Watergate.
In way of comparison, the disease Covid – as well as all the calamitous responses to Covid – must have killed and injured 10, 20, 50 million (a billion?) people by now. And these casualty figures are still growing.
Nor did Watergate cripple the economy nor lead to rampant inflation.
Nor did it lead to mass censorship and the evisceration of civil liberties.
Also, the Watergate conspiracies and cover-ups included only a small group of Nixon loyalists in the White House, plus a few people who actually did the “dirty tricks.”
It takes no Woodward and Bernstein for the Man on the Street to realize that Covid crimes and cover-ups must have involved practically every agency in government by now.
NIH, NIAID, CDC, FDA, the Pentagon, the FBI, the CIA, the White House, the Department of Homeland Defense, Congress, the Justice Department, the courts , judges, governors, mayors, OSHA, the Departments of Transportation, Commerce, Labor, HHS … local police departments, all the state and local health agencies, colleges, school boards … almost all of these agencies went “all in” on the bogus Covid narratives and requisite cover-ups.
Then we have all of the private sector cronies and conspirators....
....MUCH MORE
