Has the fourth estate lost its tenacity

Harrison Salisbury’s old book on The New York Times, Without Fear or Favor, is worth reading these days, especially for the members of the fourth estate.

The book focuses on the Pentagon Papers and Watergate and legendary newspapermen like Ben Bradlee of the Washington Post and Abe Rosenthal of the Times. It tells of how they and their reporters dug in.

The Post was initially criticized for making too big a deal out of a story about a break-in at Democratic Party headquarters. But the paper kept working the story and kept finding more rot within and we all know how it turned out. In the case of the Times and the Pentagon Papers, there was no cowering to White House warnings of publishing state secrets or compromising national security. It was in the public interest to publish. They published.

The late James Thomson, who was a curator for Neiman media fellowships at Harvard, issued a warning in the Salisbury book about journalists who, by contrast, become too much a part of the establishment. To use an old 1970s word, they get co-opted. They just move along, responding to what the government puts out. They “seldom stay long enough with one central story or issue.”

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