Abstract
This book richly deserved AEJMC’s 2011 Frank Luther Mott/Kappa Tau Alpha Research Award for 2010’s best book on journalism and mass communication based on original research published. It is a modern Greek tragedy, the forces of evil and goodness battling each other to the death, with evil ultimately winning. It’s a page-turner, reading more like a novel than the carefully researched work of history that it is.
(Full disclosure: Feldstein is now a professor at the University of Maryland, but as a professor emeritus there myself, I have not met him. I should also note that as a young journalist in Washington, I regarded Jack Anderson and Drew Pearson as heroes—the only real investigative reporters in town; Anderson later did guest lecturing in my classes. I was also a victim of an abusive investigation by the Nixon FBI. So I’m not exactly objective about the two main characters in this book.)
That said, as I was reading, it seemed to me that Feldstein was too even handed in dealing with Anderson (once a near saint in my estimation) and Nixon (the devil incarnate). But by the end of the book, the poisoning of the press in the title makes sense.
Nixon did approve a plot to assassinate Anderson (and poison was the weapon of choice), and he would have loved to eliminate investigative journalists altogether. Feldstein makes it clear that Anderson’s last twenty years were bizarre, and he became poisoned with money. But I don’t think it was Anderson who poisoned the press, and, in the account of the Mott award, stoked “the toxic sensationalism that contaminates contemporary media discourse.” By the mid-1980s, Anderson was no longer influential in journalism circles (where he was often mocked), and did not inspire the media’s growing obsession with profits.
But in the 1960s and early 1970s, Anderson landed one great scoop after another, beating the large newspapers at their game. In 1972, he won the Pulitzer Prize in national reporting for his exposé of the Nixon administration’s tilt toward Pakistan. He also did groundbreaking reporting on the Watergate break-in and burglary, though he was upstaged by Woodward and Bernstein, who got the glory and the Pulitzer.
While Anderson’s reporting often led the way on important Washington stories in the sixties and seventies, he was cramped by his format. More than a thousand newspapers carried his “Washington Merry-Go-Round” at its peak, but the column was limited to 750 words, and he was unable to give his work the in-depth and extensive coverage available in the large news hole of the Washington Post, the New York Times, and other newspapers.
His critics complained constantly about the ethics of his news gathering. He didn’t hesitate to pay sources for crucial information. He encouraged whistle-blowers to break the law to provide him with classified documents. The so-called “Anderson Papers,” based on a large cache of classified material leaked to him by a fellow Mormon and Navy yeoman who had typed many of the documents, exposing the Pakistan affair, were in some quarters considered as important as the “Pentagon Papers.”
And yes, he did go through garbage to dig up the dirt about officials in high places, especially J. Edgar Hoover (they loathed each other). Feldstein tells the story of Anderson being caught in the act by one of Hoover’s house workers. “Well,” he supposedly told the man, “Mr. Hoover put his garbage out to be picked up, and I’m merely picking it up.”
If Feldstein’s book has any flaws, it is probably its method of attribution and referencing. There are direct quotes on nearly every page, but we’re not told exactly where they came from. There are almost a hundred pages of endnotes, bibliography, acknowledgments, and index. But the notes are by page, not by line, and it is frustratingly difficult to pin down any one particular quote or questionable fact. Much of the dialogue, expletives and all, came from the Oval Office tapes that Nixon used to record all his conversations. But the source of direct quotes from other mouths is harder to ascertain. This might make the book less valuable to historians than it should be.
On the other hand, this is clearly an impressively researched work. Feldstein interviewed more than a hundred primary sources, consulted nine other oral histories, dug into more than a dozen archives, read extensive government reports and secondary sources, and probably had to listen to a lot of those tapes.
The concluding “Epilogue” is incisive and insightful about the current crisis in news media and government. Feldstein writes, “A poisonous press fueled Washington’s modern scandal culture, stoking sensationalism and partisanship to attract attention and profits,” accompanied by “journalism’s abdication of its watchdog role.”
On the government side, he writes, “The Nixon veterans who peopled Reagan’s media apparatus learned to camouflage their contempt for the press. Reagan’s men were ‘slicker and smarter and therefore more dangerous and more effective’ than Nixon’s”—a quote from CBS newsman Dan Rather, who covered both administrations.
Bringing the tale up to date, Feldstein concludes, “In all, the post-Watergate turnaround was breathtaking. Three decades after Nixon’s resignation, his acolytes had completed a stunning reversal, expanding executive power while taming the news media. After the ‘erosion’ that followed Watergate, Vice President Cheney said proudly, ‘We’ve been able to restore the legitimate authority of the presidency.’ Thanks to sophisticated propaganda, hardball intimidation, sensationalist distractions, and deregulatory bribery, Nixon’s men [Cheney and Rumsfeld in particular] had poisoned the press in a way their mentor never dreamed possible. Richard Nixon would have been proud.”
There are many lessons here for everyone.