{"id":1697,"date":"2009-05-26T16:41:32","date_gmt":"2009-05-27T00:41:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=1697"},"modified":"2023-08-28T01:29:31","modified_gmt":"2023-08-28T08:29:31","slug":"a-real-coup-for-the-press-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=1697","title":{"rendered":"A Real Coup for the Press, II"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=1121\">Back in December, I drew attention<\/a> to: <div style=\"padding: 1em ; padding-bottom: 1em ;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.stratfor.com\/weekly\/20081222_death_deep_throat_and_crisis_journalism\"><q>The Death of Deep Throat and the Crisis of Journalism<\/q> by George Friedman at StratFor<\/a> <blockquote style=\"font-size: smaller ;\">The story of Deep Throat was well-known, but what lurked behind the identity of Deep Throat was not. This was not a lone whistle-blower being protected by a courageous news organization; rather, it was a news organization being used by the FBI against the president, <span style=\"font-style: italic ;\">&#91;&#8230;&#93;<\/span>.<\/blockquote><\/div> Now: <div style=\"padding: 1em ; padding-bottom: 0 ;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/americas\/8067842.stm\"><q>US paper missed Watergate scoop<\/q> from the <abbr title=\"British Broadcasting Corporation\">BBC<\/abbr><\/a>: <blockquote style=\"font-size: smaller ;\"><p>The story began on 17 June, 1972, when a group of men were caught breaking into the Watergate complex in Washington DC. They were attempting to plant listening devices in the offices of the Democratic National Committee.<\/p><p>Robert Smith says that two months later &mdash; on his last day at <span style=\"font-style: italic ;\">the New York Times<\/span> &mdash; he had lunch with the acting director of the <abbr title=\"Federal Bureau of Investigation\">FBI<\/abbr>, L Patrick Gray.<\/p><p>In an interview with the BBC, Mr Smith recounts how Mr Gray began divulging details of the Watergate break-in, a range of other illegal political activity, and the Nixon administration's attempts to cover it up.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/div> Again, the <em>big<\/em> story is <em>right there<\/em>, but being ignored: The <abbr title=\"Federal Bureau of Investigation\">FBI<\/abbr> set-out to <em>covertly<\/em> bring-down a Presidential Administration.  Now we see that <em>two<\/em> major papers were positioned to recognize this, and each concealed this <em>coup<\/em> from the public.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Back in December, I drew attention to: The Death of Deep Throat and the Crisis of Journalism by George Friedman at StratFor The story of Deep Throat was well-known, but what lurked behind the identity of Deep Throat was not. This was not a lone whistle-blower being protected by a courageous news organization; rather, it [&hellip;]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,9,104,4],"tags":[589,590,275,588,341,483,482],"class_list":["post-1697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-ideology-philosophy","category-news","category-public","tag-fbi","tag-federal-bureau-of-investigation","tag-mainstream-media","tag-new-york-times","tag-nixon","tag-washington-post","tag-watergate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1697"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1697\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12154,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1697\/revisions\/12154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}