Importance to Journalism
Watergate lead Journalism to a new level of importance. Woodward and Bernstein were journalists that became legendary for their journalist articles. Their topics like Deep Throat and five burglary suspects for the break-ins were topics that had countless articles made about them. The main reason that so many people wrote articles about them is because Americans were extremely interested in them. They were hard hitting and shocking stories. This most likely brought more Americans then before to read the paper. Another part of Watergate that was hard hitting were the articles on Nixon's phone calls more popularly known as "Smoking Gun". This refers to the President's secret phone calls, one of which had an 18 minute gap that mysteriously disappeared. Journalists caught this and ran with it. They caught Nixon in the act and outed him. This left Nixon with no choice but to resign. Journalism gained a new type of power; the power to effect society.
Elena F. |
Lessons Watergate Taught America
Nixon was constantly afraid of the American Government's secrets leaking to any other country, especially Vietnam during the war. This fear caused Nixon to allow and even encourage many illegal activities. Anyone who opposed his Vietnam Policy would be intimidated and harassed. He allowed a group to use illegal methods to gain compromising information. Daniel Ellsberg's leak of the Pentagon papers in 1971 caused Nixon to create a group that's main purpose was too stop leakage no matter how many illegal activates have to be made in order for this goal to be accomplished, "plumbers". Directed by Nixon, the Plumbers broke into Ellsberg's Psychiatrist office to find compromising information on Ellsberg. All of these actions combined lead to Nixon's impeachment because of "abuse of power". This shows Americans and people everywhere today that if one lets a fear become a big part of their life that fear will overpower you, cause you to make the wrong choices, and and cause them to be a worse version of themselves. Nixon let the fear control so much of his time that he ruined his Presidency and caused many people to resign from the government. The Watergate scandal also taught Americans not to blindly trust their president. Any president could become overly protective of security and start to use illegal methods that they think are actually helping the society. It taught us what to look for in a good and bad president and that no one is above the law, especially the President.
Elena F. |