On June 17, 1972, there were five indicted for breaking in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington. There were seven men, and two of them were former White House aides. In June 1973 five of these men plead guilty to the crimes of burglary, conspiracy and wiretapping. Two of the five men were tried and convicted.    A couple of months later H.R. Haldeman, aide to President Nixon and John D. Ehr5lichman resigned and John Dean, White House aide was fired. In July of 1973 testimony given before the Senate Watergate Committee revealed that while in office all of President Nixon’s White House communications were taped.

U.S. President Richard Nixon

On July 24, 1973 the Supreme Court handed down a ruling that President Nixon must relinquish the tapes and documents that special Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox had subpoenaed. The American Journalism Review report written by Mark Feldstein entitled “Watergate Revisited” states that the Washington Post ran its story on August 9, 1974 on the front-page headline entitled “Nixon Resigns”. (Steinfeld,   p. 1) Steinfeld states that time was the beginning of “…three decades of debate about what role journalism played in uncovering the Watergate scandal that formed Nixon from office – and how Watergate, in turn, influenced journalism itself.” (Feldstein, 2004) 

U.S. Media during Watergate Scandal

Steinfeld asks the question of whether the media brought down a U.S. president through “muckraking” and ponders as well on how not only politics but investigative reporting both changed as a direct result of the role of the media in the Watergate scandal. According to Steinfeld Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward were the producers of the “single most spectacular act of serious journalism [of the 20^th century] according to media critic Ben Bagdikian.” (Feldstein, 2004) It is the opinion of Marvin Kalb, a senior fellow at Harvard’s Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press that public policy and politics believes that the reporting by the Washington Post was “absolutely critical [to] creating an atmosphere in Washington and within the government that Nixon was in serious trouble and that the White House was engaged in the cover up.

Media Not Viewed as Instrumental by Some Scholars

There are those who minimize the impact of journalism during the Watergate Scandal and this is true of Gladys and Kurt Lang who stated that the press “was a prime mover in the controversy only in its early phase.” (Feldstein, 2004) It is true that a primary contribution of journalism at that time was to exert influence upon the opinion of the American people or the public at large in the United States. It is notable that the struggles that took place between Nixon and his opponents were more often than not unfolding right before the eyes of the American people across the television stations throughout all U.S. states. CBS anchorman Dan Rather is reported as having stated that it is clearly shown by the record that the cover-up “would have worked if the press hadn’t done its job.” (Feldstein, 2004)