Journalistic myths

Jay Rosen:

The myth of Watergate presents the press as a powerful force but also an innocent actor because its only weapon is uncovering truth. One of the reasons I kept running into Watergate in my research is this spectacular production of innocence, which is supposed to serve as a force field against charges of agenda-serving. Of course it doesn't.

Watergate has been treated by journalists as a consensus narrative, with an agreed-upon lesson for all Americans. The Fourth Estate model not only works, it can save us. The press shall know the truth and the truth shall check the powers that be, whether Democrat or Republican. Chasing stories, exposing corruption, giving voice to the downtrodden: that's what we in journalism do, the myth says. We do it for the American people. And they understand because they know from legend--from the movies--how it was when the country was in the dark about Nixon and Watergate. Two young Washington Post reporters, guided by a powerful FBI official, bring down the...

But the discovery that Mark Felt is Deep Throat has tarnished the myth, says Mark Steyn:

Oh, dear. Like the Star Wars wrap-up, “How Mark Felt Became Deep Throat” feels small and mean after three decades of the awesome dramatic burden placed upon it. The nobility of the Watergate myth — in which media boomers and generations of journalism-school ethics bores have invested so much — seems cheapened and tarnished by this last plot twist.

...

Heigh-ho. If the bloom’s belatedly off the rose, Woodward, Bernstein and a pompous, self-regarding US media got a grand threedecade run out of Deep Throat and Watergate. As it is,the best take on Deep Throat comes not from The Washington Post but from LBJ’s old aphorism on Mark Felt’s boss J Edgar Hoover: it’s better to have him inside the tent, ah, leaking out than outside the tent leaking in. If only Nixon had kept Mark Felt inside the tent …