Free Republic

Last night CSPAN broadcast one of those panels on the public perception of the media. One of the featured guests was the aging (born 1921) Ben Bradlee from the Washington Post. He has just about lost it, but from the mouths of babes and the elderly the truth emerges.

In The Making of the President 1972, Theodore White saw the Nixon-McGovern election as other than a partisan battle for the White House between Republicans and Democrats. The title of chapter 10 is “Power Struggle: President Versus Press.” Wrote White: “What lay at issue in 1972 between Richard Nixon on the one hand and the adversary press and media of America, on the other, was simple: It was power.” In White’s judgment, Sen. McGovern was probably not in the top ten on the real Nixon enemies list, which was headed by the Washington Post, CBS, the New York Times --...

RUSH: Let's start with this Watergate stuff. Get this. This is a story from WBAL TV, Channel 11 in Baltimore. "The former FBI official who revealed himself this week as Deep Throat apparently also leaked information to The Washington Post about two of the biggest stories in Maryland in the 1970s. Post reporter Bob Woodward wrote in Thursday's paper that Mark Felt told him in the spring of 1972 during the Watergate investigation that the FBI had some information that Vice President Spiro Agnew had received a $2,500 bribe. The tip produced no story, but Agnew resigned in 1973 upon...

Conservative radio talk show host G. Gordon Liddy, who was sent to jail for his role in the Watergate scandal, said former FBI Deputy Director F. Mark Felt is a "flawed individual" who was pressured to confess his identity as the confidential source known as "Deep Throat" because his family wanted money. Liddy told the Fox News Channel's John Gibson Wednesday that as a law enforcement officer if Felt had evidence of a crime and the participants of that crime, "he was duty bound to take that to the grand jury." "That's what he should have done rather than leak...

Dear, oh dear! Nicholas Kristof, a New York Times columnist, laments, “the climate for freedom of the press in the United States feels more ominous than it has for decades.” He urges vociferous protest and a federal shield law for journalists—this because two journalists have been ordered to jail for refusing a judge’s order to reveal their sources. Both hacks are free pending appeals. Although I was in Albania for a short visit 25 years ago, I was unaware that freedom of the press was about to be curtailed in the Land of the Free. Kristof admits that judges do...

Two things took place recently that were, in a strange way, interconnected. The good thing was that Dan Rather announced his resignation; the bad thing was that Reed Irvine died. The odd thing is that I was saddened by the news of Mr. Irvine’s passing even though, until I’d read his obituary, I had never even heard of the man. It seems that until he was 47 years old, Reed Irvine had been an economist with the Federal Reserve. Then, at an age when so many men are content to work on their slice, perfect their fly-casting skills or start...

<p>Washington, June 18 (Bloomberg) -- The moderator at the National Press Club wanted to make it perfectly clear yesterday. His three guests were appearing reluctantly. ``This was our idea,'' he said, ``not theirs.''</p> <p>Ben Bradlee agreed. ``We don't really like to talk about it,'' he said.</p>