The death of Mark Felt – Deep Throat of Watergate fame – inspired former Washington Post editor Leonard Downie Jr. to ask, “Could we uncover Watergate today?” Instapundt observes that Downie is asking the wrong question rather the question:
. . . is whether the press would cover a Watergate if it happened under a Democratic administration.
Consider a few data points.
1) Newsweek had a story about an inappropriate relationship between President Clinton and an intern. Newsweek was not going to publish it, until Matt Drudge got wind of the story and publicized on his website.
2) During the 2004 Presidential election 60 Minutes aired allegations that President Bush had received favorable treatment during the Viet Nam war. Dan Rather produced a document showing to “prove” the charge. Charles Johnson showed that the memo could not have been produced on the typewriters at that time.
3) A number of the images during the Israeli-Hezbollah war of 2006 were doctored or staged. Again it was bloggers, not the MSM that noticed.
4) Earlier this year a French court found that Philipe Karsenty had not libeled Charles Enderlin when he claimed that Enderlin had fabricated his report about Mohammed al-Dura. Though Enderlin’s report was the basis for much of the subsequent media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian violence there was next to no MSM coverage of this decision that demonstrated Enderlin’s dishonesty.
5) Subsequent to Watergate, the Washington Post used its position as the exposer of official corruption to campaign for campaign finance reform. However there were limits to its curiosity. For example when its favored candidate this past election cycle, President-elect Obama’s campaign was found to have disabled protections to allow the acceptance of anonymous and potentially illegal donations, the Post followed up – rather late – with an article on the subject, hidden on page A2, a week before the election. There was a single follow up with no outraged editorial at the way candidate Obama skirted the laws the Post insisted were necessary to limit the corrupting influence of money in politics. (At least the Post allowed Bradley Smith to tell it like it is. The Post’s wimpy criticism of Obama on the topic of campaign finance reform – “a cause he injured” – in its endorsement proved Smith’s point.)
Towards the end of his article Downie asks:
In today’s cacophonous media world, in which news, rumor, opinion and infotainment from every kind of source are jumbled together and often presented indiscriminately, how would such an improbable-sounding story ever get verified?
It’s funny but the one item of investigative reporting that Downie cites as coming from the blogosphere is the U.S. attorneys firings. Not one of the items mentioned above, was a concern of his. I don’t think he’s been paying attention, but there has been a lot of investigative journalism going on. Of course many of those bloggers doing the investigative work are looking at stories that Downie’s paper has been curiously incurious about.
Mr. Downie ought to follow Instapundit’s suggestion and stop wondering if his paper “could” uncover another Watergate and wonder if they “would.”
Likelihood of Success disagrees and argues that visions of glory would inspire journalists to look beyond petty partisanship in the pursuit of corruption. On the other hand, I look forward to seeing the media get its instincts back in four to eight years.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
