On Saturday, June 17, 1972, President Richard Nixon’s’ corruption was finally exposed. Two reporters from the Washington Press exposed this corruption and even though other news organizations condemned them for exposing this, The Washington Post stood behind them and supported them. The White House secretary, Ron Ziegler, let out a statement saying that the men trying to install listening devices inside the Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate building were “third-rate” burglars. Ron Ziegler urged the Post to editorialize his statement. The Washington Post assigned two reporters to the Watergate story, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. While watching the arraignment of the Watergate burglars, Woodward realized something fishy was going on when one of the burglars stated that he worked for the CIA. Woodward and Bernstein connected the burglary to the White House and immediately begin to investigate and report on their findings. They found that President Nixon paid the “burglars”, also they found that the Watergate incident was started with a huge campaign of political spying conducted for President Nixon’s re-election. In late October Woodward and Bernstein exposed that both the Watergate burglary and the campaign of political sabotage were financed by a secretive fund of money that was controlled by the Presidents aide. Finally after four months of investigation the two journalists had enough evidence to prove that the White House was behind the Watergate burglary. Woodward and Bernstein’s determination and hard work displayed the effects of great journalism. They went to numerous houses of men and women who worked in the Committee of Re-election and even though they constantly had doors slammed in their faces they still persevered in order to get to the truth. The reporters used an internal source to verify all of their leads and evidence. That source was called “Deep Throat”. Deep Throats identity was a secret up until 2005 when he exposed himself as W. Mark Felt. He was 91 years old at the time and back in the 1970’s when the scandal was going on Felt was the second highest official in the FBI.
For months the Washington post was criticized for continuing to follow the Watergate story for so many months. The most serious effect of the Watergate scandal not being heavily publicized by other news organizations was that Nixon won the 1972 election by a landslide. Editor of the Washington Post, Ben Bradlee and publisher, Katharine Graham were the two people that ultimately took responsibility for hiring Woodward and Bernstein to cover this story. Nixon began misusing his Presidential power to punish the Post. Nixon ultimately made the Washington Post renew their television licenses and it cost the Post a lot of me and money to do this. After much time, more people joined in the fight to expose the truth against Nixon and the government. Ultimately Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974 before the impeachment process was completed. Journalists like Woodward and Bernstein that made such dramatic impacts in their reporting would forever change the country and display the importance of the news media.
I choose this chapter because of the recent events surrounding Osama’s death. The government hasn’t released nearly enough information to satisfy the public’s curiosity. It is times like these that the public looks towards journalism and the news media to seek out the truth and to expose it. Although in 1972 the Washington Post clearly suffered in its attempts to expose the truth, it was worth it in the end. With all the technology and resources available in today’s society if the news media would put a little more effort in their reporting, I’m sure they could get to the truth. The news media was created to serve the public, to inform us, to educate us on what is going on in society, not to give us brief conclusions on events going on in today’s world. They are there to expose the truth and hopefully they continue to make us proud and fulfill the expectations that they have lead the public to believe in since its creation.
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