| Certainly another milestone in the corruption of American journalism was the movie, All the President's Men. Bob Woodward and Bernstein at the Washington Post were glorified in that movie for taking down the government, specifically getting Nixon to resign over the Watergate scandal.
 This led to the rise of the Washington Post and other leftist news media. Journalism turned into a much coveted job for social justice warriors and progressives who wanted big government authority to impose their will over the public because "We know better than those ignorant voters". But in 2005 when Mark Felt outed himself as Deep Throat, the truth was revealed: Felt had passed all the juicy Watergate scoop to the WaPo junior reports so he could get even with Richard Nixon. In other words, Woodward and Bernstein were simply stool pigeons in a battle for control over the FBI. Nixon was actually trying to wrestle control of the law enforcement agency from the corrupt iron grip that J. Edgar Hoover and his successors held over the government. Felt was Hoover's right-hand man and so Nixon did not promote him, but picked an outsider, Patrick Gray, instead for FBI Director. So look at in this light, Nixon was on the side of the good: he sought to gain some control over an FBI that had overstepped its bounds and authority. The real significance of Watergate was explained beautifully in a 2012 column by Pat Buchanan: The Outing of Deep Throat. Here's an excerpt: As the 40th anniversary of Watergate impends, we are to be bathed again in the great myth and morality play about the finest hour in all of American journalism. The myth? That two heroic young reporters at The Washington Post, guided by a secret source, a man of conscience they dubbed “Deep Throat,” cracked the case and broke the scandal wide open, where the FBI, U.S. prosecutors and more experienced journalists floundered and failed... [But Deep Throat] Mark Felt was a snake. He used the Post to destroy his rivals and advance his ambitions, and the Post didn’t care what his motives were because Felt was assisting them in destroying their old enemy {Richard Nixon]. Yes, indeed, the finest hour in American journalism. /sarc |
