How Things Work in Washington
Consortium News
It
is sadly ironic that Bob Woodward, who in his early career was a
role model for investigative journalists, appears now to have been
corrupted by power and Washington politics.
By Robert Parry
In his book, Secrecy & Privilege,
Robert Parry tracks how the Washington press corps changed from the
Watergate/Vietnam era of the 1970s, when journalists took some pride in
challenging the powerful, to the Iraq War, when many national news
outlets cowered and fawned before a White House that equated skepticism
with disloyalty.
This
gradual but unmistakable shift in the ethos of Washington journalism
marked a hard-fought victory for conservatives who invested billions of
dollars over the past three decades in building a media/political
machine for gaining as much control as possible of the information
flowing through the nation’s capital to the American people.
Journalists
who bucked the trend confronted ugly attacks from right-wing media
“watchdogs,” almost inevitable betrayal by news executives, and dashed
careers. Journalists who played along were rewarded with fame, money
and access.
Today, no
journalist personifies this transformation more than Washington Post
assistant managing editor Bob Woodward, who made his name unraveling
Richard Nixon’s Watergate cover-up but now has been caught misleading
the public while protecting the Bush administration’s cover-up of a
scheme to smear an Iraq War critic.
(click here to read the entire article)
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