Watergate ( What Happened how did it begin)

Watergate began on an early Saturday morning in 1972 when five men were arrested for breaking into the offices of the Democratic National Committee Headquarters at the Watergate office complex. At first it had the hallmarks of a simple run of the mill break in until it was noted the advance listening equipment or bugs that they were on them at the time and the fact that one of the men had the phone number of a high level advisor to president Nixon in his pocket. With this information in mind Howard Bernstein and Robert Woodward of the Washington post knew that this was no run of the mill break in and proceeded to investigate further.

·         In august 1972 Woodward and Bernstein found out that burglars were paid with Nixon campaign funds

·         September 1972 Attorney General Mitchell was implicated in the break-ins when it was determined that several of his associates had control of the account used to fund the Watergate break in and were kept in a special account of the Nixon campaign committee also known as (C.R.E.E.P) The Committee  to Reelect the President

·         October 1972 Woodward and Bernstein whip out an October surprise reporting that Nixon’s entire re election strategy was based on dirty tricks and by trying to sabotage democratic opponents Watergate stemmed has an all out political assault spying and sabotaging democrats on behalf of president Nixon directed by Nixon’s white house inner circle.

·         Mid October 1972 Dwight Chaplin was also linked to the break in as a contact in the spying and sabotage operation conducted on Nixon’s behalf.

·         Late October 1972 H.R Haldeman president Nixon’s Chief of staff was linked to the break in has one of the five Nixon associates allowed to approve payments from a Nixon secret campaign fund thus showing how the Watergate burglary and dirty tricks campaign was financed.

            These reports by woodward and bernstein began to unravel the truth behind watergate and that the white house may have been involved in the break in at the Democratic Headquarters at the Watergate. at this point in 1972 the white house continued to deny any involvement, but the Washington post the only newspaper that ran with the story felt they were getting close to the truth thanks to the actions taken by the white house.
          It all began when a washignton post reproter was suddenly banned from covering and attending white house social functions, then Presdient Nixon orderd the Federal Communcations Commission (FCC) not to renew the broad cast license of 2 televsion stations in florida owend by the post company. by doing so post publisher Graham as well Woodward and Bernstein along with post editor Ben Bradlee. knew that watergate struck a nerve with someone in the white house and that it was only a matter of time before the truth comes out.
    mean while the trial of the burglars was proceeding in dc district court were judge Sirica suspected that the burglars were coverning up another crime. that was related to the break in given that there was evidence that implicated white house staff memebers. one of the burglars in exhchange for a lighter sentence finally spilled the beans to invetigators his testimony implicated members of President Nixons Inner Circle. then a grand jury conveined and indicted president nixon as a co conspirator and G Gordon Liddy, Dwight Chapman, E Howard Hunt, John Mitchell, H.R Halderman and Senior Counsel Elrichman. for obstrstruction of justice charges.Judge Sirca asides from conveing a grand jury absed on the testimony of one of the burglars orderd presdient nixon to handover the taped conversations Nixon had of oval office conversations.
Nixon handed over the tapes and they were incriminating.
       With woodward and Bernsteins reporting was the starting point of the investigation taht led to the exposure of the watergate scandal by having the greatest governement confidential source known as deep thorat who was a senior governemnt offcial within the Executive Branch who confrimed Woodward and Benrsteins inforamtion and subsuquently prevented them from pursuing dead ends, but in addition to the investigations in the courts and The lone reporting of the washington post The Legislative Branch or the second estate began running hearings looking into an investigation of possible articles of impeachment of Presdient Nixon these 70 day hearings in the house Judiciary Commitee turned the tables on the White House and blew the Scandal wide open and facing possible impeachment Nixon on August4th,1974 became the first President ever to resign from office.
          Revealing the biggest corruption scandal in american history.  the legacy of the watergate scandal is the reason we need a free press for they are the advocate of the people and they remind us the citizens again and again that we are a free society made up not of people, but of laws.

Watergate

For my third and final blog project I have chosen to discuss Watergate Forces the president to his knees. I chose chapter 13 because of the profound impact the press and government played in exposing the biggest corruption Scandal in American history. In which it took the press and the government working has two separate entities to expose corruption at the highest levels of our government and expose the danger it posed to our democracy.   

Chimamanda Adichie: The danger of a single story

(The Danger of A Single Story)

  

        Chimamanda Adiche on the Dangers of a Single Story

            The Danger of a Single Story is a Story told by the Nigerian Author Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche.  In this story she talks about how during her childhood growing up in Nigeria. That her discovery of Nigerian authors such as Chinua Achebe and Camara Laye changed her perception about the impressions of books and stories in particular. Up until this point in her life has a child she had only read foreign books therefore she assumed that all books must contain stories and characters that were foreign. Of this she would say "Because I had read books in which all characters were foreign. I had become convinced that books by their very nature had to have foreigners in them and had to be about things with which I could not personally identify."-Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche. It wasn’t until she had started reading the works of African authors such as Chinua Achebe and Camara Laye that she began to realize that " because of the works of Chinua Achebe and Camara Laye I went t through a mental shift in my perception of literature realized that people like me girls with skin the color of chocolate whose kinky hair could not form ponytails could also exist in literature"- Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche. ultimately she concluded that by becoming aware of and reading the works of these Nigerian authors she was saved from the danger of a single story for her in which literature can have a place for everyone, but the true danger is that when we hear one story about a person or country or about people we risk making critical mistakes and misunderstanding each other. She brings up the story of their housemaid being very poor until one day she visited the house maids home and his brother had a very nice handbag and then she learned the lesson that just because you are poor does not make you incapable of doing things like making a hand bag or driving a car this misinterpretation also taught her just because you are poor doesn’t mean you cannot function in society the same as wealthier people. She also mentions the story of her American college roommate who believed that Africa was a primitive continent and as a result she assumed that Chimamanda did not know how to use a stove or that Africa had no culture. Chimamanda ultimately concludes that the danger of a single story is that when you describe a person a country or a people has one thing over and over again they then become that one thing instead of the true sum of their parts. For example her roommate didn’t know about contemporary African music or the heart operation that took place in a hospital in the Nigerian city of Lagos everyday or that most African nations are just as modern as other places in the world.  

            All throughout history we know this to be true and such is the case of the yellow Journalism peddled by Hurst and Pulitzer that fueled the public sentiment that led to the Spanish American war. Up until this point in American history journalism was all about the public good for it played a pivotal role from the early beginnings of our republic this country was built on the journalistic writings of Thomas Paine whose essay Common Sense galvanized the colonist to fight a bloody and fierce revolution that dared to make all men free and self governing, to the writings of William Lloyd Garrison and Fredrick Douglas who turned the conscious of America to the sins of slavery up until this point in American history Journalism always provided people with the correct information that allowed society to lead free and self governing lives. Until 1898 when Pulitzer and Hurst decided that they owned the information and fueled by greed and arrogance decided that they owned the information and would therefore use it to pawn the public into a feeding frenzy that lined their pockets. By publishing a single story that ultimately blamed the Spanish government of Spain for destroying the Maine a series of dangerous chain of events led to an unjust war. In the end the ultimate shame besides fighting an unjust war, was the fact that Hurst and Pulitzer became wealthier and that for the first time the press instead of being an informative means to society became a tool of propaganda that manipulated society. All because of the dangers of a single story unfortunately this would not be the first or the last time that this would happen. In 1962 during the Cuban missile crisis president John F Kennedy was talking about how the summer before he had read the book called the guns of august in which he ultimately concluded that the causes of world war I were due to fact that the English the French and the Germans due to their own udder stupidity, idiosyncrasies unnecessarily went to war and a result thirteen million men women and children were killed in a war that did not have to happen. I relay Kennedy and Chimamanda stories back to the dangers of a single story because when we believe in a single story about a person and country we set ourselves up to deceive ourselves from seeing the ultimate truth that we seek. Or as President Kennedy once put it “we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought”. Ultimately the danger we face when we believe in a single story instead of searching for the stories that give us the truth is our own prefabricated interpretation of the facts that takes us away from the truth and no longer provides society with the information that makes it free and self governing.    

For more on The Dangers of a Single Story  Click on the Link Below

http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story.html

For More On Chimamanda Adiche Click on the Link Below

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/oct/25/chimamanda-ngozi-adiche-interview

http://www.macfound.org/site/c.lkLXJ8MQKrH/b.4536885/k.A99E/Chimamanda_Adichie.htm

                

Faces of Yellow Journalisim

William Randolph Hearst


 Image provided by
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cc/WilliamRandophHearstHotelRoomc1900.jpg

Joesph Pulitizer



 Image provided by

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/49/JosephPulitzerPinceNeznpsgov.jpg


Jason Blair




 Image provided by
Jason Blair  was a reporter for the new york times  who resigned from the new york times because he plagiarized stories that he had written and published in the new york times.

http://wwwimage.cbsnews.com/images/2003/05/15/image554017g.jpg

Yellow Jorunalisim (Failure to Serve The Public Interst)

 Image:Provided by 
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/blog/2010/5/20/times-tomes-remember-maine

 This newspaper article ran by Hearst newspaper the New York Journal in the aftermath of the main explosion. this and articles like it were used to infuse the public anger that led up to the war.

         "For the great enemy of truth is very often not the lie deliberate, contrived and dishonest but the myth persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."- President John F Kennedy

   The quote by President Kennedy describes how the public got so caught up in the sensationalism being reported as news that no one thought to stop for a minute and think, instead of stopping and thinking the people allowed themselves to be used as pawns in to help a business increase profits.   


http://www.jfklibrary.org/Historical+Resources/Archives/Reference+Desk/Speeches/JFK/003POF03Yale06111962.htm

Chapter 5 Journalism: as warmonger The Spanish American war

Chapter 5 Journalism: as warmonger The Spanish American war

Chapter Summary

                  For my second blog project I chose chapter 5 of mightier than the sword.  Since the events that take place in chapter 5 are an example of how the pen is mightier than the sword. The method of yellow journalism has written in chapter 5 is an example of when journalism no longer serves the public interest, but is only interested in turning a profit. The actions taken by Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hurst serves as an example of how the pen is mightier than the sword and how the fourth estate became in a single instant more powerful than the United States government itself creating an atmosphere that forced the president of the United States and the United States Congress to declare war not because the United States was attacked by an enemy, but all because of the actions of Pulitzer and Hurst who saw an opportunity and used to make a profit.

                Joseph Pulitzer was born in Hungary in 1847 he came to the united states as a mercenary during the civil war  after the war was over he drifted west and worked for a German language newspaper and eventually purchased two failing newspapers and combined them together creating the St.Louis Post  Dispatch in 1878. Pulitzer’s philosophy about running a newspaper was news papers should be sold cheap and must be written simple for even the common man to read it. Pulitzer dedicated his paper has the people’s paper that exposed corruption and advocated and fought for the people he vowed “that accuracy to a news paper is what virtue is to a woman. At the beginning of his career Pulitzer thought of himself as a pioneer, but history will remember him as one of the pioneers of yellow journalism the making of fiction into news and reporting it has fact, creating the false illusion that the St. Louis Post Dispatch is the ally of truth when instead it was the great enemy of the truth.

                William Randolph Hurst was born in California in 1863 to a wealthy family. Unlike Pulitzer he was born with everything. He was a spoiled rich kid who with his father’s resources was able to buy his way into anything and everything he wanted. Such as his father George Hurst who bought the younger Hurst a seat into Harvard University, but instead of focusing on his studies and bettering himself he drank and partied and was eventually thrown out of the university. In 1895 after several years of working as a newspaper editor he purchased The New York Journal and worked under the same philosophy has Pulitzer that newspapers must be sold cheap and must be written with information and accuracy that people would be interested in. Hurst decided his focus would be to report on society and financial news. However when regular news stories were dull he would write sensational stories that were so controversial that would attract interest to his paper. He once paid a random couple to pretend that they got married in a hot air balloon. It was little stunts such as the balloon story that led to him being the kingpin of yellow journalism right at the turn of the century.

                In 1895 Hurst came to New York and setup the New York Journal and began writing sensational and often controversial stories in a bid to compete with Pulitzers’ paper the world. Both Pulitzer and Hurst would write just about anything so long as it was controversial and increased a profit.  The war of the news papers would come to a head in 1898 With the Spanish American War. In 1898 Cuban rebels were fighting with Spain for their independence. Hurst portrayed them as heroes and used that medium to portray the Spanish has villains he wrote several false stories about Spanish soldiers in Cuba. One story was how a group of Spanish soldiers boarded a ship and stripped searched female passengers on deck in public view when in actuality they were searched by a female officer below deck, but still he spun the story despite knowing the truth. Another story was when he published a story of how Spanish soldiers impounded his yacht for no reason when in reality his yacht had weapons and when the Spanish guarding Cuba saw this when they boarded Hurst yacht they towed it in, but once again Hurst spun the story and made it look as if he were the victim of piracy on the high seas.

                Things came to a head on February 15, 1898 when the USS Maine exploded killing 260 service men. The U.S.S. Maine was American naval ship sent to protect American interest in Cuba. Immediately both Pulitzer and Hurst began writing stories immediately about how the explosion was attributed to an explosion caused by the Spanish. Within weeks of the disaster both Hurst and Pulitzer through their own fabricated reports that the cause of the explosion was caused by an underwater explosion caused by the Spain. Although the government’s official report concluded that the cause of the explosion was in conclusive Hurst and Pulitzer spun the story to the point that the government had to given to the public outcry and March to war. Has a result the United States sent 5,000 men to their deaths and was given control of the Spanish claims in Cuba and The Philippines and Hurst made a fortune, and reached a circulation of over a million subscribers, but what I find appalling is the fact that Hurst and Pulitzer were not punished for printing such cases of liable.

                The act of Pulitzer and Hurst is an example of how in a negative way that the pen is mightier than the sword , that when journalism focuses on profit they can no longer serve the public good.