Forty Years of Watergate

On June 17, 1972, the Washington, D.C. police arrested five burglars in the offices of the Democratic Party in the Watergate Hotel.

On June 11, forty years later, dozens of hand selected guests joined Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward and Ben Bradlee to celebrate the most significant investigation in the history of American journalism. The celebration took place in the offices of “The Washington Post,” a newspaper that has unfortunately lost much of its luster over the past several years.

Four decades have passed since the first articles by journalists Bernstein and Woodward. Other investigative pieces have also shaken the pillars, but Watergate remains unique in the collective imagination, a veritable myth.

“No other investigation has had such an impact on American society,” says Jon Marshall, author of “Watergate’s Legacy and the Press,” a book published last year with a foreword by Bob Woodward. “Several institutions were interested in the Nixon administration, but the reporters at ‘The Washington Post’— and there were more than two who worked on the case—pursued the investigation further.”*

“From that moment on, anything seemed possible,” Marshall says. “Investigative journalism had the wind in the sails in the 1970s.”

We should remember that the social context of those years favored questioning. The Vietnam War caused people to confront the authority of those who made decisions.

“We allocated far more resources to investigative journalism in that era,” notes Jon Marshall, who teaches journalism at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in Illinois. “We saw the appearance of magazines and television shows dedicated to investigation. It was really a golden age for that type of journalism.”

This golden age would not last during the 80s and 90s, when there was a real backlash against journalists and the media.

Marshall explains this “backlash” in three ways.

“First,” he says, “after Nixon, politicians, including those who surround the President, have become more adept in their dealings with the press. Then, under Reagan, the White House succeeded in painting this sort of journalism in a negative light, as a group opposed to every government initiative. Finally, the last reason that explains a certain cynicism about the media, is the one-upmanship regarding scandals. The suffix ‘gate’ is added to anything and everything, to the point that the public has begun to think that journalists exaggerate and cry scandal for every minor occasion.”

The 90s were also marked by a much more sensationalist media and by news shows that use emotion (such as commentators who yell loudly) rather than investigation.

Other factors explain how investigative journalism has become more difficult than in the past: The media’s financial situation has led to a search for a new business model; the media is owned by corporations in search of profits and dividends for their shareholders; and finally, the corporations have hired an army of lawyers to defend themselves.

Can the American people, who contributed to the creation of Watergate as myth, still see value in investigative journalism?

“It’s a good question,” says Jon Marshall. “I believe that the ordinary citizen, when faced with the result of an investigation, recognizes its value. I tend to be optimistic. I note that newspapers that have decided to impose a paid subscription, such as ‘The New York Times,’ ‘The Wall Street Journal’ and ‘The Economist,’ are the ones that do investigative work, and there are people ready to pay for it. It’s perhaps not the majority of people, but there are enough for the journalists to continue.”