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Watergates Legacy and the Press: The Investigative Impulse. By Jon Marshall. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2011. xx, 313 pp. Paper, $24.95, isbn 978-0-8101-2719-7.)
Nearly forty years after the Watergate break-in, the legacy of that scandal continues to cast a shadow on politics and rhe press in Washington, D.C. How did this happen? What role did journalism pfay in President Richard M. Nixon's resignation? What changes in investigative reporting preceded and followed Watergate? And what does this portend for the future? These are the questíons addressed in this lucid, well-researched book.
In truth, journalism's precise role in Nixon's demise is impossible to measure definitively. To the conservative writer Paul Johnson, the "Watergate witch-hunt" was "run by liberals in the media," especially the Washington Post, and led to "the first media Putsch in history". The television anchorman Dan Rather also viewed...