QUESTION Cartoon: If Watergate happened with today's media
I was busy gestating during the Watergate crisis, and not paying much attention to the news, but hopefully this re-creation will resonate with people who lived through it. This comic was of course inspired by the Nunes memo, about which an objective headline might look something like: “Republicans release piece of garbage intended to mislead public about the Russia investigation.”
An amazing and highly-relevant detail that should be household knowledge but that I learned only this week: the origins of Fox News can be traced back to the Nixon White House. The Nixon administration wanted more favorable coverage in the media and hatched the idea of creating a pro-GOP news network. Roger Ailes offered to do it, though it took some 25 years for the network to actually materialize. Via the late Gawker (which was sued out of business by billionaire Trump backer Peter Thiel):
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6 comments
Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.The world would be a better place without religious republicans and their brainwashed offspring. If you believe in obvious lies as "facts", then it isn't a much further stretch to believe everything you are spoon fed by right wing media. People no longer understand what a "fact" is. They think whatever they believe is a "fact".
Welcome to Orwell's 1984.
shockwaverider
Level 8
Feb 14, 2018
2
My "like" does not mean that I like the world that you describe, it simply means that I agree with you.
@JanGarber That's how I would have taken it but thanks for clarifying.
I consider Watergate the "pivotal" point in my life.
So, I am amazed we are back where we were. Do we stop teaching history at the Korean War?
I am thankful that real journalism still exists, mainly the WaPo and NYT. I've become a fan of the Guardian, too.
It saddens me that people no longer have an open mind to the facts. It seems as if only the fact my side came up with are the only ones that matter.
phil21
Level 7
Feb 12, 2018
1
My history classes always ended with Wilson's 12 points. That is all that we had time for.
And yet...if it weren't for media (other than Fox), Cheeto would be having it all his way. Hitler opened Dachau less than 6 months after his election specifically for dissidents and the free press. If not for the media, with all its flaws, what, exactly, would anyone know about Cheeto & friends? Only what they wanted you to......
AnneWimsey
Level 9
Feb 10, 2018
2
There is no more investigational journalism today..
Nobody asks the hard follow-up questions any longer..the sad state of MSM is that they're all Owned by the Multinational Corporations..
Charlene
Level 9
Feb 10, 2018
4
Jnei:
In the UK, we're very fortunate to have The Guardian - a newspaper owned by a trust (the Scott Trust) that was set up purely to preserve the paper's independence. Although it's liberal and left-leaning, it gives space to other viewpoints too and does a very good job of remaining unbiased.
I remember Radio Prog , in the days when it only had to give an opinion that was other than the U.S.'s , & it opened your eyes & made you think ! I loved that & I miss it . The truth is no where to be found , everyone exaggerates . Look what we started 
So we have Nixon to blame for the dumbing down of the American population? From here on out I will call FOX news the Republican News Network.
HippieChick58
Level 9
Feb 10, 2018
3
I refer to it as FAUX news, the Republican/Conservative/Evangelical Propaganda Network.
@jlynn37 Ya know that may have been the first time in 3 years I've called it Fox. I usually do call it Faux. OMG, I'm slipping into complacency!
How about TNTN - Trump Nixon Televangelical Network. We make truth.
But according to a remarkable document buried deep within the Richard Nixon Presidential Library, the intellectual forerunner for Fox News was a nakedly partisan 1970 plot by Ailes and other Nixon aides to circumvent the “prejudices of network news” and deliver “pro-administration” stories to heartland television viewers.
The memo—called, simply enough, “A Plan For Putting the GOP on TV News”— is included in a 318-page cache of documents detailing Ailes’ work for both the Nixon and George H.W. Bush administrations that we obtained from the Nixon and Bush presidential libraries.
Flash forward to February 1, 2018. Fox’s Geraldo Rivera tells Sean Hannity “Nixon never would have been forced to resign if you existed in your current state back in 1972, ’73, ’74.” (Hat tip to commenter MiketheLiberal who alerted me to this development, which I’d missed).
Between the corrupt Fox and an intimidated/lobotomized mainstream media deathly afraid of showing “liberal bias,” we have a crisis of journalistic ethics on our hands, one that deeply threatens American democracy and, ultimately, the freedom of the press itself.
(Full disclosure: I currently do editing work for the company that used to publish Gawker. - @JenSorensen )
Dougy
Level 7
Feb 10, 2018
1
Enjoy being online again!
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