Len Downie, former executive editor of the Washington Post and an editor during the Watergate era, fretted how the proliferation in media outlets means that now, unlike during Watergate, coverage of supposed Trump scandals is being undermined because there’s a “right wing press that is not concerned about facts.”
Downie on the July 16 Reliable Sources on CNN:
“There’s so much more media now than there was then. For a long time, the Post was alone on the Watergate story. There were -- it was a whole string of editors, including myself, who vetted all the stories, who would challenge Bob and Carl on whether or not the conclusions they were drawing were the right conclusions to draw from the facts.
“And we were able to do that without -- without other things going on. And there was no Internet then. There was no cable television. And there was no -- there was no competing press of the kind that there is now. There’s a sort of a right wing press that is not concerned about facts. It constantly attacks the legitimate reporting that’s going on. None of that was present then.”
>> This video clipped to illustrate Paul Bedard's July 17 Mainstream Media Scream for the Washington Examiner <<