Political Controversy: The Watergate Scandal

Political controversy has become increasingly interesting to me within the past few years. Choosing a fairly recent topic that I would be able to talk about with my parents, as well as my teachers was also extremely important to me. I came across a decrepit encyclopedia in the back of my family’s bookshelf and skimmed through it, looking especially for major events that affected the public immensely. While narrowing down my topic choices, I determined the Watergate Scandal would be a great choice for me because of my interest in politics, and the complexity of the subject would allow me to explore different paths to focus on.
I first conducted general research on the Watergate Scandal to enhance my ability to comprehend and categorize any

further information I learned. During my research, I found that the amount of information on the topic was so extensive, I had to narrow my topic down to focus primarily on the legacy Richard Nixon left on political relations with the media, as well as the media’s relations with American citizens. I found it was helpful to get a blank notebook and take notes on important events. This notebook also helped me to form my thesis and help me visualize my project as a whole. As I was progressing in taking notes, I created my website so I could add information to it along the way. From there it was as simple as restating the notes I had taken, as well as finding accurate and appropriate images to add throughout.
The theme this year was exploration, encounter, and exchange, which at first glance may seem to be disconnected from my project, but the deeper I researched, the more apparent the connection became. Watergate was a first of it’s kind in American politics. Americans, perhaps for the first time, encountered a deep loss of trust in the government which still strongly persists today. Politics has evolved into more than keeping America a spectacular country, but it is now about finding flaws within, and scrutinizing government officials choices, as well as their personal lives. This was also one of the first times America had more faith in the media than the government, so the exchange of information from the media not only soared, but it drastically shifted to meet the expectations of the audience.