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Comment by aristus | Hacker News Reader

Try that line with an actual journalist. There is corruption everywhere, even in the newsrooms. And politicians don't always want to hide things.

A few years ago it came out that Deep Throat was Mark Felt -- he had been #3 at the FBI. Felt was disgruntled that Nixon had passed him over for promotion after JE Hoover died, and so carried out a leak campaign through the Washington Post that ultimately brought Nixon down.

The Post editors and Woodward & Berstein knew who Felt was. They chose to keep quiet and accept decades of hero-worship. The truth was that they were willing participants in a rather slimy and petty act of political revenge.

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"There is corruption everywhere, even in the newsrooms."

So? What is to prevent a rival paper from reporting on the newsroom? (I actually have memory of this happening - an editor of a major newspaper was a philander and another paper ran an article on him. Another big story happened 20 odd years ago - one paper was funded by the government and another newspaper brought that to light - the result was that one of the people who organised funding did not become president).

"And politicians don't always want to hide things."

So, if they are not hiding something they would not mind people looking? I am one of those people who think it is a good idea of a healthy dose of cynicism for public officials.

"They chose to keep quiet and accept decades of hero-worship. The truth was that they were willing participants in a rather slimy and petty act of political revenge."

The question is not if Woodward&Bernstein were upstanding citizens with good values. The question is this: Was the Watergate affair good for the country? Would it be better if it had not been brought to light?

> The question is not if Woodward&Bernstein were upstanding citizens with good values. The question is this: Was the Watergate affair good for the country? Would it be better if it had not been brought to light?

"Don't say anything" isn't the only alternative to "tell only part of the story".

Woodward and Bernstein deliberately withheld relevant information to make themselves and their source look good. If anyone else does that, the press screams "coverup", "corruption", etc.

I'm always amused by the assumption that Watergate was a relatively big deal. Yes, taking down a president was a major accomplishment, but I'm talking about the underlying crime and coverup.

Does anyone seriously believe that far worse things don't happen fairly regularly?

I'd argue that Watergate actually argues that the press is relatively useless.

You went from "I have not heard of a case ..." to mentioning a few cases. I took your first comment at face value; now I don't know what to make of it.

Philandering around the workplace is usually a big no-no but it is definitely not corruption by any stretch of the imagination. I did this to show you that journalists will easily turn on their own kind.

As for the case of the government covertly starting a newspaper, I have not heard about it (but read about it in history books). They did this with the express purpose to change public opinion - since the current English newspapers were too critical of the government (with good reason). That really is before my time (20+ years or more).

I do not recall a single instance in my country where journalists were found guilty of corruption. Yet for politicians the list of the non-corrupt would probably be shorter.

Are you presenting Woodward and Bernstein's refusal to name Deep Throat as an example of journalistic corruption?

Actually, yes. Nixon was a son-of-a-bitch, but that doesn't mean B & W didn't violate the public trust. For several months in the 1970's, a virtually unknown spook paralyzed the government of the most powerful nation on earth. And Woodward & Bernstein covered it up.

Refusing to name sources is about two things: actually protecting people in danger, and protecting your rep as a journalist. Felt's safety was never an issue. This is a man capable of bringing down the president, right? He was sitting on 50 years of dirty secrets collected by JE Hoover. No one dared touch him.

So B, W, and their editor kept quiet for purely selfish reasons. Then they willingly let themselves and their paper be used to settle a personal score against Nixon. They provided Felt with cover to make his leaks more effective. All the while they painted it as a home run for integrity and democracy, when in fact it was a political feud.

How is all of that not that a violation of the public trust, ie, corruption?

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