By Gene Robbins, Managing Editor
Forty years ago, Watergate era changed it all
The national day for journalism should be June 17.
That would be in recognition of the botched burglary at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C., 40 years ago this week. It was the beginning of an unraveling scandal that led to the first and only resignation of a president of the United States.
Along the way, we learned then-president Nixon had a “hit list” and would use government agencies, like the FBI and IRS, to punish those who opposed him. After years of stories developed from Oval Office tapes, we now know that little even disregard of the law would be beyond his approval to gain a political advantage, the reporters most often linked to breaking the historic story wrote recently in a op-ed piece in the Washington Post.
Reporters Carl Bernstein and Robert Woodward, who most famously peeled back each layer of the Watergate saga, wrote last week that then-president Nixon was “far worse” than they thought as a threat to the American system of governance.
To me, Watergate epitomizes the irreplaceable importance of a free press in pursuing a story in the face of government resistance or pooh-poohing of the original incident in this case as a “third-rate burglary,” in the words of the press secretary Ron Ziegler.
I believe that the 14month-long Watergate scandal and its aftermath, alas, also eroded and undermined the public’s confidence in government perhaps forever. It contaminated the nation’s idea of government as an instrument of possibility and promise. Politicians as a group have never regained the trust and confidence of the public.
Of course, it’s why the suffix “-gate” meaning scandal gets attached to any ongoing controversial story these days.
Watergate motivated the modern generation of journalists. It should remind reporters and editors that nothing comes easily, and no good story comes without hard, sometimes ingloriously mind-numbing, work. It reaffirmed persistence in finding ways to break a story, alternately using cajoling or legal challenges to hack through or work around roadblocks.
And Watergate taught us that, if the crime doesn’t get ‘em, the coverup will.
I’ll remember that Woodward and Bernstein spent many hours virtually alone and encountered as many dead ends as successes. I loved the fact they doggedly plowed through library book checkout receipts to make the first connection to burglars to the Republican National Committee and eventually the Nixon Administration.
I’ll always remember that often they had to resort to shoe leather and luck. To confirm a story a second and third source was demanded by the Post they knocked on doors of the homes of party and government officials who possibly could contribute to the story. They often cajoled their way in, getting reluctant people to furnish detail and nuance. Remember Bernstein drinking cup after cup of coffee, and using the excuse of using the bathroom to scribble notes furiously on toilet paper?
Watergate will be famous for Deep Throat’s advice to “follow the money,” usually information available from hints and notes in documents. And it glorified the anonymous source and off-the-record comments, unfortunately often misused and overly relied upon today. Senate hearings were the source of the “what did he know, and when did he know it?” remark used almost casually today.
Watergate is also the internal industry story of the clash of reporters and editors, each with their separate role to a common goal. Reporters are bound to get the story but editors have the responsibility to be sure it’s right, to ask the questions that keep the inquiry focused and harangue reporters to check and recheck facts.
The message of Watergate simultaneously celebrates the liberties of a republic, and warns of the dangers and responsibilities of keeping it.
BTW the ubiquitous Internet tells me there is a National Journalism Day and it’s Nov. 17. That’s the day President Nixon, in a press conference, famously declared, “I am not a crook.”
Fair enough, but we never would have gotten there without June 17 and the indefatigable work and tenacity of journalists who followed.
Gene Robbins is managing editor of the Hillsborough Beacon and Manville News in the Packet Media Group.

