The 50th anniversary of the Watergate arrests is approaching: The first break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters was on May 28, 1972, but the botched return on June 17 produced arrests and eventually brought Richard Nixon’s presidency to a premature end on Aug. 8, 1974. The Washington Post’s Margaret Sullivan has what is sure to be a popular opinion: Had Watergate played out in today’s media environment, Nixon would have survived.
I’m not so sure.
There are many issues involved — the media, Congress, overall partisanship, and the nature of Nixon’s crimes and presidency. Yes, today’s news environment is very different from that of the early 1970s, which was the peak of “neutral” media — that is, news organizations whose journalists explicitly thought of themselves as neutral.
