W. Joseph Campbell

Archive for the ‘Watergate myth’ Category

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Watergate and revolutions: Indulging in media-power myths

In Debunking, Media myths, Washington Post, Watergate myth on March 29, 2011 at 11:21 am

Assertions about the power of the media tend to be blithely made, often without much support or documentation. It’s almost as if assertion is good enough, evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.

So it was with a commentary posted yesterday at Huffington Post, which offered these evidence-free claims:

“In the 1970s, the Washington Post’s reporting led to the downfall of President Nixon. In recent months, Facebook accelerated the downfall of governments in the Middle East and Twitter helped to ignite the demonstrations in the last Iranian election.”

The claim about the Post and Nixon’s downfall in the Watergate scandal is one that not even officials at the Post embrace.

Katharine Graham, the newspaper’s publisher during Watergate, declared in 1997, for example:

“Sometimes people accuse us of bringing down a president, which of course we didn’t do. The processes that caused [Nixon’s] resignation were constitutional.”

And as I discuss in Getting It Wrong, my media-mythbusting book that came out last year, the contributions of the Post in uncovering the Watergate scandal “were modest, and certainly not decisive.”

Far more vital to Watergate’s outcome, I note, were the collective if not always the coordinated efforts of special Watergate prosecutors, federal judges, bipartisan panels of both houses of Congress, the Justice Department, the FBI, and the U.S. Supreme Court.

To argue that “the Post’s reporting led to the downfall” of Nixon is to misread the history of Watergate and to indulge in a beguiling media-driven myth.

As for the assertion in the HuffPo commentary that “Facebook accelerated the downfall of governments in the Middle East” — how many regimes have been toppled? All of two?

Facebook may have had an accelerant effect, but do we know that for sure? What’s the evidence that it did have such effects?

It is far more likely that comparatively moderate dictatorships in Egypt and Tunisia fell because they were less inclined to apply severe repression — unlike hardline regimes in Iran, Syria, and Libya, where leaders hesitate little in killing and jailing protestors in large numbers.

The point about the disparate responses of moderate and hardline regimes was made quite well by Simon Sebag Montefiore in a commentary Sunday in the New York Times.

Montefiore wrote:

“Once the crowds are in the streets, the ability to crush revolutions depends on the ruler’s willingness and ability to shed blood. The more moderate the regimes, like the Shah’s Iran in 1979 or Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt, the easier to overthrow. The more brutal the police state, like Colonel Qaddafi’s Libya, President Saleh’s Yemen or President Assad’s Syria, the tougher to bring down.” Facebook, or no Facebook.

Montefiore added that “technology’s effect is exaggerated” in revolutions and would-be revolutions. He noted broad similarities in the upheavals of 1848 and those sweeping North Africa and the Middle East in 2011.

The uprisings in 1848, he wrote, “spread from Sicily to Paris, Berlin, Vienna and Budapest in mere weeks without telephones, let alone Twitter. They spread through the exuberance of momentum and the rigid isolation of repressive rulers.”

Such factors tend to characterize the contagion of protest that emerged this year in Tunisia and spread to Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and Bahrain.

What, then, accounts for claims that media content can be decisive in scandals such as Watergate and in upheavals such as those in the Arab world?

Complexity-avoidance certainly is a factor.

Crediting the Washington Post with having brought about Nixon’s resignation or Facebook for having “accelerated the downfall of governments in the Middle East” is to offer simplistic, easy-to-grasp explanations for complex events.

The urge to simplify is, as I point out in Getting It Wrong, an important factor accounting for the emergence of media-driven myths, those dubious media-centric tales that masquerade as factual.

Media myths often arise, I write, “from an impulse to offer easy answers to complex issues, to abridge and simplify topics that are thorny and intricate.”

A related factor is that indulging in media-power myths can be self-serving and self-rewarding. Tales of media power are comforting to journalists, as salve for image and self-worth.

In his review of Getting It Wrong, Andrew Ferguson wrote in Commentary magazine that media myths often  “cast the journalist as hero. No wonder they’re so popular … among journalists. We warm ourselves by such tales, draw compensation and comfort from them, which is why they’re taught in our trade schools as elements of basic training.”

Ferguson added, in closing: “Some stories are too good to check.”

And that, too, explains why media-power myths, such as those surrounding Watergate, take hold and endure: They’re just too good to check, too reaffirming not to be true.

WJC

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WaPo ‘played pivotal role’ in Watergate? Think again

In Anniversaries, Bay of Pigs, Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Media myths, Washington Post, Watergate myth on March 24, 2011 at 7:52 am

The Wall Street Journal blog “India Real Time” indulged yesterday in the conventional but mistaken narrative of the Watergate scandal, declaring that the Washington Post “played a pivotal role in effectively bringing down then U.S. President Richard Nixon.”

Effectively brought down Nixon, eh?

Not even the Post buys into that misreading of Watergate history.

As I note in my latest book, Getting It Wrong, the newspaper’s publisher during and after the Watergate scandal, Katharine Graham, dismissed that interpretation, declaring in 1997:

“Sometimes people accuse us of bringing down a president, which of course we didn’t do. The processes that caused [Nixon’s] resignation were constitutional.”

Similarly, the newspaper’s executive editor during Watergate, Ben Bradlee, has asserted:

“[I]t must be remembered that Nixon got Nixon. The Post didn’t get Nixon.”

Such comments aren’t the manifestation of false modesty. Far from it. Rather, they represent candid observations about the peripheral role the Post played in uncovering the scandal that brought about Nixon’s resignation in 1974.

As I write in Getting It Wrong, rolling up a scandal of the dimension and complexity of Watergate “required the collective if not always the coordinated forces of special prosecutors, federal judges, both houses of Congress, the Supreme Court, as well as the Justice Department and the FBI.

“Even then,” I add, “Nixon likely would have served out his term if not for the audiotape recordings he secretly made of most conversations in the Oval Office of the White House. Only when compelled by the Supreme Court did Nixon surrender those recordings, which captured him plotting the cover-up and authorizing payments of thousands of dollars in hush money.”

Still, the notion that the Post was vital to the outcome of Watergate, that the newspaper “effectively” brought down a president, is the stuff of legend. It’s a powerful media-driven myth that offers a simplistic and misleading interpretation of the country’s greatest political scandal.

Watergate was among the media myths I discussed last night in a book talk at Kensington Row Bookshop in Kensington, MD.

I noted in my talk: “Obstruction of justice — not the Washington Post — is what cost Nixon his presidency.”

I also spoke about the mythical “Cronkite Moment” of 1968 and the NewYork Times-Bay of Pigs suppression myth of 1961.

The “Cronkite Moment” is shorthand for the dubious notion that the on-air assessment of CBS News anchorman Walter Cronkite forced President Lyndon Johnson to alter policy on Vietnam.

In a special report that aired February 27, 1968, Cronkite declared that the U.S. military effort in Vietnam was “mired in stalemate” and suggested that negotiations would prove to be the way out of the morass.

Johnson supposedly was at the White House that night, watching Cronkite’s show. Upon hearing the “mired in stalemate” assessment, the president supposedly snapped off the television set and said to an aide or aides:

“If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.”

Or words to that effect.

As I said in my talk at the Kensington bookshop, “Acute version variability— the shifting accounts of just what was said — can be a marker of a media-driven myth.”

And so it is with the so-called “Cronkite Moment.”

Johnson did not see the Cronkite program when it aired. The president at the time was in Austin, Texas, offering light-hearted comments at a birthday party for Gov. John Connally, who that day turned 51.

About the time Cronkite was intoning his “mired in stalemate” commentary, Johnson was at the podium at Connally’s birthday party, saying:

“Today, you are 51, John. That is the magic number that every man of politics prays for—a simple majority.”

That line drew laughter from the audience of 25 people at the Kensington bookshop.

The Times-Bay of Pigs suppression myth, I said in my talk, dates almost 50 years — to April 1961, when “a CIA-trained force of Cuban exiles threw themselves on the beaches of southwest Cuba in a futile attempt to turn Fidel Castro from power.”

Supposedly, the Times censored itself about invasion plans several days before the assault took place — at the request of the President John F. Kennedy.

The Times, I said, “did not censor itself. It did not suppress its reporting” about invasion preparations.

“In fact,” I added, “the Times’ accounts of preparations for the invasion were fairly detailed — and prominently displayed on the front page in the days before the Bay of Pigs assault was launched.”

The suppression myth seems to have has its origins in the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 — when the Times, at Kennedy’s request, did hold off publishing a story about the deployment of Soviet nuclear-tipped missiles in Cuba.

On that occasion, I said in my talk, “when the prospect of a nuclear exchange seemed to be in the balance, the Times complied” with the president’s request.

“But no such request,” I added, “was made of the Times in the run-up to the Bay of Pigs invasion of 50 years ago.”

WJC

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‘Follow the money,’ again and again

In Anniversaries, Cinematic treatments, Debunking, Media myths, Washington Post, Watergate myth on March 21, 2011 at 7:24 am

“Follow the money.

“That advice from Watergate informant ‘Deep Throat’ led Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward to the truth that uncovered corruption in the nation’s public office. The concept applies to situations beyond the Oval Office, though. The commitment of a significant amount of money reveals the motivation (and the identity) of the spender.”

So read the opening lines of a commentary posted yesterday at the online site of the Terre Haute Tribune-Star in Indiana — yet another news outlet to indulge in the most famous made-up line of Watergate, “follow the money.”

The guidance to “follow the money” wasn’t offered by Woodward’s stealthy “Deep Throat” source during the Watergate scandal, which broke in 1972 with the break-in at headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in Washington, D.C. (“Deep Throat” was revealed in 2005 to have been W. Mark Felt, the second-ranking FBI official in the early days of Watergate.)

What’s more, the line “follow the money” didn’t appear in any Watergate-related article or commentary published by the Post until 1981 — years after the scandal had brought about the resignation of President Richard Nixon.

As I’ve noted at Media Myth Alert, the line was written into the screenplay of All the President’s Men, the cinematic version of the book Woodward and his colleague, Carl Bernstein, wrote about their Watergate reporting.

The line was spoken by the actor Hal Holbrook, who turned in a marvelous performance as the “Deep Throat” source in All the President’s Men, the movie.

Holbrook, who recently turned 86, delivered his lines about “follow the money” with such quiet assurance and knowing insistence that it sounded for all the world as if it really were guidance vital to rolling up Watergate and identifying Nixon’s misconduct.

Except that in real life, such advice wouldn’t have taken Woodward very far — certainly not to the point of determining Nixon’s guilty role in the crimes of Watergate, certainly not “to the truth” about the scandal.

As I write in Getting It Wrong, my mythbusting book that came out last year, some 20 men associated with Nixon’s administration or his 1972 reelection campaign went to jail for crimes linked to Watergate.

Rolling up a scandal of such dimension, I write in Getting It Wrong, “required the collective if not always the coordinated forces of special prosecutors, federal judges, both houses of Congress, the Supreme Court, as well as the Justice Department and the FBI.

“Even then,” I add, “Nixon likely would have served out his [second] term if not for the audiotape recordings he secretly made of most conversations in the Oval Office of the White House. Only when compelled by the Supreme Court did Nixon surrender those recordings, which captured him plotting the cover-up and authorizing payments of thousands of dollars in hush money.”

What cost Nixon the presidency wasn’t of the improper use of campaign funds but his efforts to obstruct justice in the FBI’s investigation of the break-in and related crimes.

It’s likely we’ll encounter many other references in weeks ahead to “follow the money.” After all, the 35th anniversary of the release of All the President’s Men falls next month.

And already, the University of Texas at Austin — repository for Woodward and Bernstein’s Watergate papers — has scheduled three programs related to All the President’s Men, the movie.

WJC

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Talking media myths at the alma mater

In 1897, Cronkite Moment, Debunking, Furnish the war, Media myths, Spanish-American War, Washington Post, Watergate myth on March 19, 2011 at 9:06 am

I gave a talk about media-driven myths yesterday on the campus of Ohio Wesleyan University, where years ago I earned my undergraduate degree in journalism and history.

The talk focused on three of the media myths debunked in my latest book, Getting It Wrong, which is dedicated to Verne E. Edwards Jr., my journalism professor at Ohio Wesleyan.

I was delighted that Edwards and his wife attended yesterday’s talk, during which I discussed the myths of Watergate, of the “Cronkite Moment,” of William Randolph Hearst’s purported vow to “furnish the war” with Spain.

These, I said, all are well-known tales about the power of the news media that often are taught in schools, colleges, and universities. All of them are delicious stories that purport to offer lessons about the news media’s power to bring about change, for good or ill.

I described media-driven myths as I often do — as “the junk food of journalism, meaning that they’re tasty and alluring, but in the end, not terribly healthy or nutritious.”

Because it debunks prominent media myths, Getting It Wrong, I said, should not be considered “yet another media-bashing book.”

Rather, I said, Getting It Wrong is aligned with a fundamental objective of American journalism — that of getting it right.

I noted that the book is provocative and edgy — inevitably so, given that it dismantles several of the most-cherished stories in American journalism.

Among them is the notion that the Watergate reporting of the Washington Post exposed the crimes of the administration of President Richard Nixon and forced his resignation in 1974.

I noted that the Post and its reporting “was really peripheral to the outcome” of Watergate, pointing out that even senior officials at the newspaper have insisted as much over the years.

Among them was Katharine Graham, publisher of the Post during Watergate, who said on the scandal’s 25th anniversary in 1997:

“Sometimes people accuse us of bringing down a president, which of course we didn’t do. The processes that caused [Nixon’s] resignation were constitutional.”

I also pointed out that Bob Woodward, one the lead reporters for the Post on Watergate, has expressed much the same sentiment, only in earthier terms. In an interview in 2004 with American Journalism Review, Woodward declared:

“To say the press brought down Nixon, that’s horseshit.”

I also reviewed the “Cronkite Moment” of February 27, 1968 — that legendary occasion when the on-air assessment of CBS News anchorman Walter Cronkite supposedly altered American policy on the Vietnam War. At the end of a special report about Vietnam, Cronkite asserted that the U.S. war effort was “mired in stalemate.”

President Lyndon Johnson supposedly watched Cronkite’s program and, upon hearing the anchorman’s “mired in stalemate” analysis, snapped off the television set and declared:

“If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.”

Or something to that effect.

I pointed out that Johnson did not see the Cronkite program when it aired, that the president then was in Austin, Texas, at the 51st birthday party of Governor John Connally.

“About the time Cronkite was intoning his ‘mired in stalemate’ commentary,” I told the audience at Ohio Wesleyan, “Johnson was at the podium at Connally’s birthday party, saying: ‘Today, you are 51, John. That is the magic number that every man of politics prays for — a simple majority.’

“Now that may not have been the greatest presidential joke ever told,” I said, “but it is clear that Johnson at that time wasn’t lamenting his fate, wasn’t lamenting the supposed loss of Cronkite’s support” for the war in Vietnam.

Clearly, I added, the so-called “‘Cronkite Moment’ was of little importance or significance for Johnson. Especially since he didn’t even see the show when it aired.”

I described how Hearst’s purported vow to “furnish the war” lives on despite Hearst’s denial and despite an array of reasons that point to the anecdote’s falsity.

Hearst supposedly made the vow in an exchange of telegrams with the artist Frederic Remington, whom Hearst had sent to Cuba in early 1897 to draw sketches of the Cuban rebellion against Spanish colonial rule — the nasty conflict that gave rise in 1898 to the Spanish-American War.

The tale “lives on despite an irreconcilable internal inconsistency,” I said. “It would have been absurd for  Hearst to have vowed to ‘furnish the war’ because war — the Cuban rebellion against Spanish rule — was the very reasons he sent Remington to Cuba in the first place.”

Still, that anecdote and other media myths live on because they are “deliciously good stories — too good, almost, to be disbelieved,” I said. Too good, almost, to check out.

The university president, Rock Jones, introduced my talk, which was organized by Lesley Olson, general manager of the OWU bookstore, and by Cole E. Hatcher, the university’s director of media and community relations.

Two college buddies of mine, Hugh D. Pace and Tom Jenkins, also attended the talk.

WJC

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‘So to Speak’ about ‘Getting It Wrong’

In Debunking, Furnish the war, Media myths, Newspapers, Washington Post, Watergate myth on March 18, 2011 at 6:32 am

My mythbusting book, Getting It Wrong, made the Columbus Dispatch yesterday as the subject of a cleverly written column that opened this way:

“After interviewing W. Joseph Campbell, I checked the Dispatch archives to see whether I had ever committed any of the journalistic exaggerations he likes to skewer.

“I did write in 2005 that Mark Felt, the ‘Deep Throat‘ of Watergate fame, ‘rid the world of Richard Nixon.’ But I was overstating for effect, so I plead not guilty by reason of humor.”

Heh, heh. Nice touch.

The author was Joe Blundo, a veteran reporter who writes the “So to Speak” column for the “Life and Arts” section of the Dispatch.

The column was pegged to my book talk this afternoon at Ohio Wesleyan University, where I earned my undergraduate degree in journalism and history in the mid-1970s.

Blundo in his column offered overviews of some of the 10 media-driven myths dismantled in Getting It Wrong, including the notion that “Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of The Washington Post brought down Nixon with their Watergate reporting.

“Certainly Woodward and Bernstein (and Woodward’s source Deep Throat) had a role in the drama,” Blundo wrote, “but it took investigators, Congress and the Supreme Court to ultimately force the president to resign, Campbell, 58, said by phone.”

He further quoted me as saying that against the backdrop of subpoena-wielding authorities who dug into the crimes of Watergate, “the contributions of The Washington Post really recede into near insignificance.”

The newspaper’s contributions weren’t decisive, that’s for sure. Even officials at the Post have attempted over the years to distance the newspaper from the popular narrative that its reporting forced Nixon to resign.

As I note in Getting It Wrong, Katharine Graham, the newspaper’s publisher during and after the Watergate scandal, was among the senior figures at the  Post who dismissed that mediacentric link. She said in 1997, at a program marking the scandal’s 25th anniversary:

“Sometimes people accuse us of bringing down a president, which of course we didn’t do. The processes that caused [Nixon’s] resignation were constitutional.”

Also that year, Ben Bradlee,the executive editor at the Post during Watergate, said on the “Meet the Press” interview show:

“[I]t must be remembered that Nixon got Nixon. The Post didn’t get Nixon.”

Blundo also quoted me about some of the reasons media-driven myths are so tenacious and appealing — that they place the news media decisively at the center of important events and that they offer simplistic explanations for complex issues and developments of the past.

“Yet the myths won’t die,” he wrote.

I’m afraid he’s right. Media myths die hard, if they die at all.

The only way to counter them is to call them out, to pound away at them when they appear in the news media. Even then, utter and thorough debunking is rare. These stories, after all, often are too good not to be true.

And often too good to check out.

WJC

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WaPo ‘broke the Watergate scandal’? No way

In Debunking, Media myths, Washington Post, Watergate myth on March 17, 2011 at 7:04 am

I like to see blogs calling out the Washington Post, an unevenly edited shell of its former self.

The “Texas on the Potomac” blog did just that the other day, calling out the Post for misidentifying two Houston congressmen named Green.

But in adding a snarky dig of its own, the blog committed a more notable lapse, declaring that the Post “broke the Watergate scandal.”

Here’s what the blog post said:

”Oops! The Washington Post has apologized to Houston congressmen Al Green and Gene Green for mixing them up in its coverage of last week’s controversial House hearing on Muslim extremism. At the hearing, you’ll recall, Al Green criticized Republicans for focusing on Islamic terrorism while ignoring other forms of terrorism such as the Ku Klux Klan.

“But the newspaper that broke the Watergate scandal identified the Houston congressman as Gene Green.”

Oops, indeed. Flubbing the identities of the congressmen Green was unfortunate; more troubling was declaring that the Post “broke the Watergate scandal.”

It did no such thing.

The signal crime of Watergate — the June 1972 burglary at Democratic National Committee headquarters — wasn’t broken by the Post. The break-in was interrupted by police and, within hours, news was circulating of the arrest of five burglars at the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C.

The story in the Post about the break-in appeared beneath the byline of Alfred E. Lewis, a veteran police reporter, and its opening paragraph made clear that the information came from investigators:

“Five men, one of whom said he is a former employee of the Central Intelligence Agency, were arrested at 2:30 a.m. yesterday in what authorities described as an elaborate plot to bug the offices of the Democratic National Committee here.”

Watergate reporting by the Post did not expose the cover-up of crimes linked to the break-in or the payment of hush money to the burglars, either.

As I note in my latest book, Getting It Wrong, which includes a chapter about the media myths of Watergate, Post reporter Bob Woodward was quoted as saying in 1973 that those crucial aspects of the scandal were “held too close. Too few people knew. We couldn’t get that high.”

Nor did Woodward and his Watergate reporting colleague Carl Bernstein uncover or disclose the existence of the White House audiotaping system, which was decisive to the outcome of Watergate.

Audiotapes secretly made by President Richard Nixon captured him approving a plan in June 1972 to impede the FBI in its investigation of the Watergate break-in.

That contents of that tape — the so-called “smoking gun” of Watergate — sealed Nixon’s fate and led to his resignation in August 1974.

The White House taping system had been disclosed 11 months before, by investigators of the Senate select committee on Watergate, which convened hearing in spring and summer 1973.

As I point out in Getting It Wrong, Woodward and Bernstein later claimed to have had a solid lead about the existence of the taping system.

In All the President’s Men, the book he wrote with Bernstein, Woodward recalled having spoken with Post Executive Editor Ben Bradlee about the lead. Bradlee advised, “I wouldn’t bust one on it.”

Had they followed that lead, Woodward and Bernstein may well have broken a pivotal story about Watergate.

But they didn’t.

So, clearly, the disclosures about the pivotal events that led to Nixon’s resignation in Watergate weren’t the work of the Post.

As I’ve noted in previous postings at Media Myth Alert, it’s intriguing to note how the Post from time to time has sought to emphasize that its reporting was not decisive in Nixon’s resignation.

In 2005, for example, Michael Getler, then the newspaper’s ombudsman, wrote:

“Ultimately, it was not The Post, but the FBI, a Congress acting in bipartisan fashion and the courts that brought down the Nixon administration. They saw Watergate and the attempt to cover it up as a vast abuse of power and attempted corruption of U.S. institutions.”

And Bradlee, the executive editor during Watergate, said on a “Meet the Press” interview show in 1997, 25 years after the break-in:

“[I]t must be remembered that Nixon got Nixon. The Post didn’t get Nixon.”

WJC

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Counterpunching that made-up line, ‘follow the money’

In Cinematic treatments, Debunking, Media myths, Washington Post, Watergate myth on March 15, 2011 at 9:45 am

Watergate’s most famous invented line showed up yesterday at the online site of CounterPunch, which touts itself as “America’s best political newsletter.”

That most famous invented line of Watergate is: “Follow the money.”

It was written into the script of All the President’s Men, the 1976 movie about the Watergate reporting of the Washington Post, and has since made a smooth, seamless transition to the vernacular.

Indeed, “follow the money” has become the passage most commonly associated with the Watergate scandal, which culminated in 1974 in the resignation of President Richard Nixon.

A commentary at the CounterPunch site referred to “follow the money” in a lengthy discussion of the perjury trial in Texas of a former CIA operative, Luis Posada Carriles, stating:

“During the investigation into the 1972 Watergate scandal, Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward found a source, whom he referred to only as ‘Deep Throat,’ who told him to ‘follow the money.’ Woodward and fellow journalist Carl Bernstein followed the money trail and unraveled the mysteries behind the crimes and subsequent cover-ups of President Richard M. Nixon and his White House staff.”

Simple as all that, eh? “Follow the money” was key to unraveling “the mysteries behind the crimes” of America’s greatest political scandal?

Hardly.

As is the case with all media-driven myths, there are elements of accuracy in that narrative. Woodward did periodically discuss Watergate with a high-level government source to whom the Post referred as “Deep Throat.”

But in real life, “Deep Throat” never counseled Woodward to “follow the money.”

Nor does “follow the money” doesn’t appear in All the President’s Men, the book Woodward and Bernstein wrote about Watergate.

Nor does the line appear in any Post article or editorial published during the Watergate period.

Nor was unraveling Watergate a simple matter of pursuing a money trail.

Far from it.

As I note in my latest book, Getting It Wrong, which debunks 10 prominent media-driven myths, rolling up a scandal of the dimension and complexity of Watergate “required the collective if not always the coordinated forces of special prosecutors, federal judges, both houses of Congress, the Supreme Court, as well as the Justice Department and the FBI.

“Even then,” I added, “Nixon likely would have served out his term if not for the audiotape recordings he secretly made of most conversations in the Oval Office of the White House. Only when compelled by the Supreme Court did Nixon surrender those recordings, which captured him plotting the cover-up and authorizing payments of thousands of dollars in hush money.”

The popularity of “follow the money” — a line for which screenwriter William Goldman has taken credit — highlights another characteristic of media myths: Their tendency to minimize complexity and offer simplistic and misleading interpretations instead.

I note in Getting It Wrong that high-quality cinematic treatments — and All the President’s Men is a telling example — can contribute significantly to solidifying and making believable mythical accounts of historical events.

“Follow the money” is just one of the distortions presented in All the President’s Men, the movie.

More broadly, the film promotes what I call the “heroic-journalist” interpretation” of Watergate.

The heroic-journalist meme is a trope that knows few bounds. It is the most familiar storyline of Watergate — the mediacentric version that Woodward and Bernstein, through their dogged and courageous reporting, brought down Nixon and his corrupt presidency.

It is one of American journalism’s most self-reverential stories — one propelled by the movie version of All the President’s Men.

As I point out in Getting It Wrong, the film placed Woodward and Bernstein “at the center of Watergate’s unraveling while denigrating the efforts of investigative agencies such as the FBI.

“The effect was to solidify and elevate the heroic-journalist myth, giving it dramatic power, and sustaining it in the collective memory.”

All the President’s Men offers no version of Watergate other than Woodward and Bernstein, with the help of “Deep Throat,” brought about the first-ever resignation of a U.S. president.

That’s an abridged and misleading interpretation, a misreading of history that deserves serious counterpunching.

WJC

Many thanks to Instapundit Glenn Reynolds for linking to this post

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Of media myths and false lessons abroad: Biden’s Moscow gaffe

In Bay of Pigs, Debunking, Media myths, New York Times, Newspapers, Washington Post, Watergate myth on March 14, 2011 at 7:57 am

Biden shows the way (White House photo)

Vice President Joe Biden embraced in Moscow last week one of American journalism’s most tenacious myths — the notion that reporting by the Washington Post “brought down” Richard Nixon’s corrupt presidency in the Watergate scandal.

Unwittingly or otherwise, Biden offered up the Watergate myth as a telling example of the values and virtues of a free press. The vice president said in remarks at Moscow State University:

“Journalists must be able to publish without fear of retribution. In my country it was a newspaper, not the FBI, or the Justice Department, it was a newspaper, the Washington Post that brought down a President for illegal actions.”

As I’ve noted, not even the Post endorses that superficial and misleading reading of Watergate history. (Ben Bradlee, the newspaper’s executive editor during Watergate, has said for example: “[I]t must be remembered that Nixon got Nixon. The Post didn’t get Nixon.”)

The significance of Biden’s mischaracterization of Watergate goes beyond being merely curious; it’s more than just another example of the gaffe-prone vice president slipping up again.

His remarks demonstrated anew that media myths are not just intriguing curiosities of history. They showed how false lessons can worm their way into diplomacy and policymaking.

Biden’s speech represented pointed criticism of — and recommendations for — Russia and its legal and political systems.  Biden offered a laundry list of democratic reforms that autocratic Russia ought to undertake, stating that courts “must be empowered to uphold the rule of law and protect those playing by the rules.

“Non-governmental watchdogs should be applauded as patriots, not traitors. …

“Journalists,” he added, “must be able to publish without fear of retribution.” To buttress his point about a robust free press, he invoked the claim that “the Washington Post … brought down a President for illegal actions.”

Biden offered that anecdote as an example of the benefits of press freedom, which he called “the greatest guarantee of freedom there is….”

Invoking the myth that the Post “brought down” Nixon is to offer an international audience a false lesson about the power of the news media. Invoking the myth is to suggest, wrongly, that that news media can, when circumstances are right, force a sitting president from office.

As I note in my latest book, Getting It Wrong, rolling up a scandal of the sweep and dimension of Watergate “required the collective if not always the coordinated forces of special prosecutors, federal judges, both houses of Congress, the Supreme Court, as well as the Justice Department and the FBI.”

Even then, I write, “Nixon likely would have served out his term if not for the audiotape recordings he secretly made of most conversations in the Oval Office of the White House.

“Only when compelled by the Supreme Court did Nixon surrender those recordings, which captured him plotting the cover-up” of Watergate’s signal crime — the break-in at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in June 1972.

Considered against the tableau of subpoena-wielding investigators and special prosecutors, the Watergate reporting of the Post recedes in significance.

As Michael Getler, the newspaper’s ombudsman wrote in 2005: “Ultimately, it was not The Post, but the FBI, a Congress acting in bipartisan fashion and the courts that brought down the Nixon administration.”

I also note in Getting It Wrong that “media-driven myths are neither trivial nor innocuous. They can and do have adverse consequences.”

They tend to offer simplistic and misleading interpretations of important historical events, and they “can blur lines of responsibility and deflect blame away from makers and sponsors of flawed public policy,” I write, citing as a case in point the New York Times-Bay of Pigs suppression myth.

Had the New York Times had reported all it knew 50 years ago about the run-up to the pending Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, the administration of President John F. Kennedy likely would have scuttled the operation–thus sparing the country a stunning foreign policy reversal.

Or so the media myth has it.

As I discuss in Getting It Wrong, that interpretation is not only misleading but it diverts responsibility away from Kennedy and his flawed decision to go ahead with the invasion.

The Times, after all, published a number detailed, front-page reports about the anticipated invasion in the days before the ill-fated assault. And there is no evidence that the newspaper censored itself under White House pressure in the run-up to the Bay of Pigs invasion.

And in the final analysis, I note, ” it was Kennedy, not American journalists, who gave the go-ahead in April 1961, sending a brigade of Cuban exiles to a disastrous rendezvous in the swamps of southwestern Cuba.”

The cause of independent-minded journalism in Russia would have been better served had Biden skipped the myth and urged the Kremlin to pursue serious investigations into unresolved cases of journalists who’ve been killed because of their work.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists says 19 journalists have been killed in Russia since 2000.

The country, CPJ says, has a “record of rampant impunity in resolving the killings of journalists.”

WJC

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Mythmaking in Moscow: Biden says WaPo brought down Nixon

In Debunking, Media myths, Newspapers, Washington Post, Watergate myth on March 12, 2011 at 7:23 am

Gaffe-prone Joe Biden offered Russians this week a mythical and distorted version of American history,  declaring at Moscow State University that the Washington Post “brought down” Richard Nixon’s corrupt presidency in the Watergate scandal.

It’s an interpretation of Watergate that few serious historians embrace.

Gaffe-prone

And yet, according to the transcript of the vice president’s remarks posted online by the White House, Biden told his audience:

“In my country it was a newspaper, not the FBI, or the Justice Department, it was a newspaper, the Washington Post that brought down a President for illegal actions.”

Not even the Washington Post buys into that myth-encrusted version of history. Principals at the Post have from time to time over the years sought to distance the newspaper from such a misleading assessment.

For example, Katharine Graham, the newspaper’s doughty publisher during and after the Watergate scandal, said in 1997, at a program marking the 25th anniversary of the scandal:

“Sometimes people accuse us of bringing down a president, which of course we didn’t do. The processes that caused [Nixon’s] resignation were constitutional.”

Ben Bradlee,who was executive editor at the Post during Watergate, said on the “Meet the Press” interview show in 1997:

“[I]t must be remembered that Nixon got Nixon. The Post didn’t get Nixon.”

More recently, Michael Getler, then the newspaper’s ombudsman, wrote in 2005:

“Ultimately, it was not The Post, but the FBI, a Congress acting in bipartisan fashion and the courts that brought down the Nixon administration.”

Their comments are not the representations of false modesty: They speak to a more accurate reading of the history of Watergate than Biden offered his audience in Moscow.

Watergate-related reporting in the Post — even though it won a Pulitzer Prize in 1973 — was scarcely enough to turn from office a sitting president.

As I write in my latest book, Getting It Wrong, rolling up a scandal of the dimension and magnitude of Watergate “required the collective if not always the coordinated forces of special prosecutors, federal judges, both houses of Congress, the Supreme Court, as well as the Justice Department and the FBI.”

And even then, I write, “Nixon likely would have served out his term if not for the audiotape recordings he secretly made of most conversations in the Oval Office of the White House.

“Only when compelled by the Supreme Court did Nixon surrender those recordings, which captured him plotting the cover-up” of Watergate’s signal crime — the break-in at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in June 1972.

Biden’s remarks reflect an endorsement of I call the “heroic-journalist” myth of Watergate — the simplified and misleading interpretation that the reporting of  Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein uncovered evidence that forced Nixon’s resignation in 1974.

But not even Woodward endorses that interpretation. He said in 2004 in an interview with American Journalism Review:

“To say the press brought down Nixon, that’s horseshit.”

But as I note in Getting It Wrong, the heroic-journalist meme has nonetheless “become the most familiar storyline of Watergate: ready short-hand for understanding Watergate and its denouement, a proxy for grasping the scandal’s essence while avoiding its forbidding complexity.

“How the Post and its reporters uncovered Watergate is deeply ingrained in American journalism as one of the field’s most important and self-reverential stories,” I write.

But being deeply ingrained and popular doesn’t mean it’s accurate. Far from it.

I note in Getting It Wrong that “to explain Watergate through the lens of the heroic-journalist is to abridge and misunderstand the scandal and to indulge in a particularly beguiling media-driven myth.

“The heroic-journalist interpretation minimizes the far more decisive forces that unraveled the scandal and forced Nixon from office.” And they included the very forces Biden dismissed in his remarks in Moscow –the FBI and the Justice Department.

The transcript of Biden’s speech, delivered Thursday, also shows that he flubbed the characterization of the news media, which sometimes are collectively referred to as the “Fourth Estate.”

According to Biden, they’re the “Third Estate.”

WJC

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Fact-checking Watergate advice that ‘worked’

In Cinematic treatments, Debunking, Washington Post, Watergate myth on March 11, 2011 at 8:32 am

In an online commentary posted yesterday, media critic Eric Alterman treated as factual the most famous invented line of the Watergate scandal, “Follow the money.”

As I’ve noted at Media Myth Alert, “follow the money” was advice written into the screenplay of All the President’s Men, the 1976 cinematic version of the book by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein about their Watergate reporting for the Washington Post.

Felt: Didn't say it

The line was spoken by the actor Hal Holbrook, who in the movie played Woodward’s secretive high-level source, “Deep Throat” (who in real life turned out to be W. Mark Felt, formerly the second-ranking official at the FBI).

“Follow the money” doesn’t appear in All the President’s Men, the book.

It appears in no Post article or editorial published during the Watergate period.

And in his periodic meetings with Woodward (he never spoke with Bernstein during Watergate), “Deep Throat”/Felt never uttered the line.

Alterman, the author of  What Liberal Media? and other books, ruminated in his commentary about what he called the willingness of people in politics and the media “to debase themselves for cash.”

His essay appeared beneath the headline, “Think Again: ‘Follow the Money’,” and opened with an allusion to “follow the money,” declaring:

“Deep Throat’s advice worked for Woodward and Bernstein, and it remains useful today.”

Maybe it is “useful” still.

But it is a made-up line.

Screenwriter William Goldman has taken credit for writing “follow the  money” into the script of All the President’s Men, which came out in April 1976 — 20 months after Watergate reached a denouement with the resignation of President Richard Nixon.

Since then, millions of people have repeated the evocative and pithy line, oblivious to its derivation and unaware of its falsity.

As I point out in my latest book, Getting It Wrong, “Turns of phrase that sound too neat and tidy often are too perfect to be true.”

So it is with “follow the money”: Too good to be true.

In that respect, it’s akin to William Randolph Hearst’s purported vow to “furnish the war” with Spain. That famous line is almost certainly apocryphal, as I discuss in Getting It Wrong, which addresses and debunks 10 prominent media-driven myths.

But why bother calling attention to “follow the money”? After all, the movie into which the line was written is nearly 35 years old.

It matters because historical accuracy matters.

As I’ve noted, “follow the money” suggests that rolling up Watergate was a case of identifying and pursuing a money trail. There was, though, much more to the scandal than that.

Nixon lost the presidency not because of illegal campaign contributions but because he obstructed justice in the investigation of the scandal’s signal crime, the break-in in June 1972 at the Democratic National Committee headquarters.

All the President’s Men the movie doesn’t reach that level of complexity.

Calling attention to “follow the money” also matters because of the power and influence invested in the cinema.

I note in Getting It Wrong that high-quality cinematic treatments can be “powerful agents of media myth-making, and can enhance a myth’s durability.”

Richard Bernstein, in an essay published in 1989 in the New York Times, offered a thoughtful discussion about cinema’s capacity to shape perceptions about historical events. Although Bernstein didn’t mention All the President’s Men, his essay is germane nonetheless.

He noted that “even small details have value as history.

“To change them is the rough cinematic equivalent of a newspaper’s inventing quotations on the grounds that, even if nobody actually made the quoted statement, it represents what people were thinking or feeling at the time.”

Indeed.

Bernstein’s essay quoted Richard Slotkin, a Wesleyan University English and American studies professor, as saying:

”Even when you know that something didn’t happen, movie photography gives you the illusion that it did.”

And that helps explain the wide and enduring appeal of “follow the money”: The made-up line was delivered by Holbrook with such quiet assurance and dramatic effect that it offered the illusion of having been advice essential to investigating Watergate.

That is, to being advice that “worked.”

WJC

Many thanks to Instapundit Glenn Reynolds for linking to this post

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