How Nixon's Hatred of the Press Led to His Downfall

How Nixon's Hatred of the Press Led to His Downfall
President Richard Nixon has become synonymous with scandal and failure in American politics — and his deep hatred of the press served a crucial role in his eventual downfall.
John Avlon
09.05.17 12:00 AM ET


The president had won the election, but bitterness toward the press still consumed him. Less than two months after his landslide 49-state re-election, President Richard Nixon was lecturing his White House staff: “The Press is the Enemy. The Press is the Enemy. The Press is the Enemy.”

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In the legion of great newspaper reporters who earned their stripes covering the war in Vietnam – David Halberstam, Neil Sheehan, Marguerite Higgins and Sydney Schanberg among them – the White House recognized that television correspondents had disproportionate power in the fight for hearts and minds at home.

When CBS correspondent Morley Safer captured images of American Marines lighting fire to thatched roof huts in a village believed to be harboring Viet Cong soldiers, Frank Stanton – the president of CBS News – awoke to a phone call from the president. “Frank, are you trying to fuck me?” Lyndon Johnson shouted. “Yesterday, your boys shat on the American flag.”

It likely became more difficult for Johnson to remain defiant when the iconic CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite returned from a week-long reporting trip to Vietnam and declared the war essentially unwinnable, upending months of false optimism from the administration.

When Richard Nixon rode to the White House proclaiming a “secret plan to win the war in Vietnam,” any expected honeymoon with the press did not last long. Popular opinion had firmly turned against the war and the “credibility gap” that bedeviled his predecessor grew into a chasm of his own making. Nixon was an accomplished geopolitical strategist with deep understanding of both politics and policy, but his hatred of the press would consume him and his presidency.

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