Media Effect On The Watergate

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The way that the Watergate scandal was presented to the media was very good and helped to unravel the scandal. By getting many anonymous sources that were involved in the investigation of the Watergate scandal and taking an aggressive approach to reporting the story. The media provided in depth investigative coverage of the events surrounding the Watergate scandal. The public began to question the effectiveness and the honesty of the president and the government. In the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, many people began to feel suspicious of federal agencies and also the Watergate scandal completely changed the way journalists go about investigating scandals and other stories
During the first initial weeks of the scandal, the media seemed …show more content…

“President Nixon exhibited no interest, much less zeal, in ensuring full public disclosure of all the facts behind this shabby interference with the rights of his political opposition” (“The Watergate Tragedy” 4). The increase of media reports on the Watergate scandal caused the Nixon administration to try and use different methods to slow down the reporters like resist meeting with journalists and not giving comments to reporters. The news reporters were relentless in their search for answers in the scandal and kept on pressing different sources for any information they could get their hands on. News reports eventually showed that the president used the CIA to hinder the FBI’s investigations into where the funding for the break-ins came …show more content…

“Ford’s pardon of Nixon played a major role in his defeat in the 1976 presidential election against Jimmy Carter” (“Watergate Scandal” 68). This was another one of the big side effects of the Watergate scandal. So many people saw the pardoning of Nixon by Ford as an attempt by Ford to help his former president out in the only way he could. This pardoning by Ford also fueled the idea that the presidency was losing its honesty and integrity.
The Watergate scandal significantly changed many things in America. Changes to American journalism were the biggest changes that occurred because of the scandal. Prior to the scandal, journalism was very straightforward and did not use any innovated ways to get stories. The journalists of the time hardly ever used anonymous sources in their reports because they didn’t think that the public would accept the information if it wasn’t coming from a named

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