Pulitzer's Gold: A Century of Public Service Journalism by Roy J. Harris Jr

Author:Roy J. Harris, Jr. [Roy J. Harris, Jr.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: United States, Language Arts & Disciplines, social science, Social Science/Media Studies, 20th Century, LAN008000, History, Media Studies, SOC052000, journalism, Language Arts and Disciplines/Journalism
ISBN: 9780231540568
Google: RO3lCgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2015-12-22T20:26:46.921835+00:00

1969—The Los Angeles Times for its exposé of wrongdoing within the Los Angeles City Government Commissions, resulting in resignations or criminal convictions of certain members, as well as widespread reforms.26

CHAPTER 15

SECRET PAPERS, SECRET REPORTING

1972: The Pentagon Papers and the Times

Somewhere there is a line where the old skeptical, combative, publish-and-be-damned tradition of the past in our papers may converge with the new intelligence and the new duties and responsibilities of this rising and restless generation. I wish I knew how to find it, for it could help both the newspapers and the nation in their present plight, and it could help us believe again, which in this age of tricks and techniques may be our greatest need.

—JAMES RESTON, NEW YORK TIMES, PULITZER PRIZE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY DINNER, MAY 10, 1966

When the Pulitzer Prizes celebrated their fiftieth year in 1966, only thirty-three newspapers—a diverse assortment of large and small journals from across the country—could boast having a Pulitzer Gold Medal. A mere handful owned more than one. The New York Times had two, one short of the number earned by the Chicago Daily News, a paper that would not survive the next decade. The Washington Post had none. Starting early in the 1970s, so much would change.

Two of the greatest pure newspaper stories of the century broke, one in June 1971 and the other in June 1972. As foreshadowed at the Pulitzer ceremony by James “Scotty” Reston of the New York Times, each story would expose Americans to “tricks and techniques” in the halls of government.1 Each had its antagonists in the administration of President Richard Nixon. (Indeed, some domestic spying authorized by the White House during the Watergate period was a reaction to Daniel Ellsberg’s leaking of the Pentagon Papers to the Times.) And each story very possibly would not have seen print at all without the vigilance and courage of the news organization that took charge of the coverage. First the New York Times acquired, analyzed, and published the secret Pentagon Papers, describing deceptions that several presidential administrations had employed to keep Americans ignorant of U.S. policy in South Vietnam. Then the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein parlayed their early scoops about “a third-rate burglary”—as the Nixon administration portrayed the Watergate break-in—into an investigation that gradually exposed White House involvement in that crime and many others.

With their work, both the Times and the Post created invaluable models of public service. And more than four decades later, both still are considered classics of American media history. Yet shockingly, for different reasons, each came very close to being shut out of the Pulitzer Prizes altogether.

The New York Times associate editor Harrison Salisbury tried to capture the power of the Pentagon Papers coverage in his description of the newspaper’s final decision, after weeks of debate, to publish them. (His book Without Fear or Favor contains one of the better remembrances that the Times editors have produced over the years.) Salisbury set the stage on “that limpid Sunday of June 13, 1971,” when the first so-called Vietnam Archive installment appeared, just as the Times publisher Arthur O.

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