A Brief Comment by Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper
Say what you want about dysfunctional government and the hollowing out of newsrooms in America and in Canada, for that matter.
Richard Nixon, accompanied by his wife Pat and one of his daughters, Tricia, speaks at White House one more time before resignin the U.S. presidency in August, 1974
There was a time, some four decades ago, when both government and the media worked at their zenith to root out a leader who sought to undermine the democratic freedoms they were sworn, as institution, protect and preserve.
It was 40 years ago, this August 8th, 1974 that Richard Nixon finally announced his decision to resign as president of the United States after more than two years of investigations into what had become known as the Watergate scandals – a snake pit of criminal acts that were unearthed following Nixon’s Republican administrations efforts to cover up a break-in of a Democratic National Committee office in June of 1972.
Nixon, who had been elected twice as president in a landslide, resigned following investigations by the media, mostly notably the reporting of two young reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, at the Washington Post, and hearings conducted by Congressional and Senate committees that put their partisan differences aside to get to the bottom of the scandals.
The most powerful national leader in the world – and one that had been elected twice in landslides – was finally forced to leave office without violence or anything approaching the kind of military coup that is the norm in too many other countries, then and now. Nixon’s successor, Gerald Ford, marked his departure with the words; “Our long, national nightmare is over.” Others saw it, quite rightfully in my view, as a triumph of democracy.
Watergate seemed to make governments act more accountable for a while and it also drew many young idealists like me into journalism.
Little did those of us who chose news reporting as what we saw as more of a “calling” than a job were lambs, heading for a slaughter that would happen a few decades later when corporate chains bought up newspapers, gutted their newsrooms turned them into venues primarily responsible for circulating “content” sponsored or paid for by advertisers. All while a reading public we hoped would cry out for protecting a journalism that is vital to the health of a democracy hardly said a peep.
Oh well, at least some of us had a bright, shining moment, working in newsrooms that gave us the opportunity produce news that matters in a democracy, without fear or favour.
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