As we celebrate America’s 250th anniversary this year, journalism’s role in our country between 1950 and 2000 is worth recalling and emphasizing.
The postwar era was full of hope and anxiety; innovation and decline; war and peace; growth and inequality. The media contributed to America’s evolution in the volatile, fascinating postwar era in at least four significant ways. Two are likely familiar while the other pair rode beneath the political surface. All four significantly impacted American life in the last half of the 20th century.
“The media contributed to America’s evolution in the volatile, fascinating postwar era in at least four significant ways.”
The Unfolding of Watergate
We may think of the Washington Post today as in the midst of financial losses, layoffs, and resignations. But the newspaper – then thriving and robust – played a profound role in uncovering President Richard Nixon’s involvement in the Watergate scandal.
The paper’s contribution to our democracy at a pivotal moment may not register with younger Americans for whom the singular name “Woodward and Bernstein” may sound like a long-ago musical duo. But Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were the Post reporters who broke the story about a team of burglars aligned with President Nixon’s re-election campaign. The burglars were arrested after breaking into a Democratic National Committee office in the Watergate building in June 1972.
“Woodstein,” as some called the pair, persisted in chronicling the Nixon administration’s use of “dirty tricks” to undermine the 1972 presidential election. They also reported on the White House’s elaborate, norm-busting cover-up of its misdeeds.
At the time, the pair were young Metro reporters, not big-name Post reporters. But they held a president and his administration accountable through dogged, in-depth reporting over two years. Their often-contentious, sometimes imperfect, work resulted in the resignation of an American president, demonstrating the media’s critical role in a healthy American democracy.
To be sure, the Washington Post and Woodward and Bernstein were not the only organizations or journalists covering the dramatic events. The New York Times broke stories. CBS News’ Nancy Dickerson won a Peabody Award for her coverage. Time Managing Editor Henry Grunwald wrote a rare, but influential editorial calling for Nixon’s resignation. And the emerging Public Broadcasting System provided 51 days of Senate Watergate hearings.
The Post led, though, as the American press together practiced “accountability journalism” long before the term became popular. Journalists’ work often sparked reactions from the powers-that-be. But it may be no coincidence that trust in the media reached its highest point in Gallup polling over a 50-year period during the early-to-mid 1970s.
Covering Vietnam
Walter Cronkite first reported somewhat favorably from Vietnam in 1965. But when the trusted CBS newsman returned in early 1968, he detailed the disturbing realities he saw after the Viet Cong’s Tet Offensive that began in January of that year.
Along with televised pictures of casualties, Cronkite’s coverage included a summation of the war’s course. “It is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out,” he opined, “will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.”
Lyndon Johnson reportedly said that if he had lost Cronkite on Vietnam, he had lost Middle America. The situation wasn’t quite that simple. Support for the war already was declining before Cronkite’s 1968 trip. But backing for U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia continued to unravel after the most-watched television anchor reported something different from what American military leaders were claiming.
As with Woodward and Bernstein in Watergate, Cronkite was not the only journalist covering what he saw happening on the ground in Vietnam. Some 600 journalists reportedly were covering the war at its zenith in 1968. And 63 reporters lost their lives during the conflict. David Halberstam of the New York Times won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting, which drew complaints from the Kennedy administration and military officials. And The Times and Post published “The Pentagon Papers” against pressure from the Nixon administration.
“At the same time, journalists like Bob Schieffer, then of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, reported from Vietnam about hometown soldiers.”
At the same time, journalists like Bob Schieffer, then of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, reported from Vietnam about hometown soldiers. In 1965, Schieffer convinced his bosses to send him on a four-month assignment to write about soldiers from Fort Worth and Texas. The Star-Telegram published ads about his coverage, informing readers that: “He won’t be talking to many generals. He will be talking to your sons and daughters.”
Schieffer located 235 service members and wrote stories about them while going on ground patrols, flying on missions, and traveling on combat ships. All the while, he followed the courage of young Texans, some of whom were barely 20 years old. He later said some soldiers broke down when he told them where he was from and that he brought greetings from their mothers. His work, which included dramatic photos that the University of Texas at Arlington recently displayed, conveyed the human aspect of war.
The press’ independent reporting of events on the ground didn’t please everyone. And its role in that war’s unraveling remains a source of debate. But this much is true: It was nearly impossible for Americans to avoid a faraway conflict that came into their homes every day through newspapers, magazines, and television.
National Review and the Rise of the Conservative Movement
In 1955, William F. Buckley, Jr. launched a magazine whose mission he famously declared was to “stand athwart history, yelling Stop.” National Review didn’t stop history, but the opinion journal did redirect the course of American politics from its inception through the end of the century.
The conservative publication that the charismatic Buckley edited presented ideas for governing America that countered those popularized through the New Deal and Great Society. By advocating for a restrained government and robust anti-communism, the small but influential magazine laid the groundwork for a conservative movement, which later birthed a broad range of advocacy organizations in the 1970s and 1980s.
Most important, the groundswell National Review spawned created an opening in 1980 for Ronald Reagan, a regular reader of Buckley’s journal. As a candidate for president in 1976 and 1980, and ultimately a two-term president, Reagan championed a private sector-led orthodoxy that upended the prevailing public sector-led orthodoxy.
Reaganism’s influence on American politics and governance remained strong long after the 40th president left office in 1989. One can easily connect the dots between that influence and the journal Buckley launched in the middle 1950s.
Buckley and National Review were wrong on their support for some mid-century segregationist policies, a fact Buckley later acknowledged. But early on, he established legitimacy for his magazine and cause by driving anti-Semites and other extremists from the mainstream of conservative thinking.
National Review’s collection of writers, and later Buckley’s syndicated columns and “Firing Line” PBS show, proved the power of opinion journalism: Ideas matter – and they have consequences.
Covering Discrimination
The media’s role in alerting white Americans to the realities of racial segregation was a major factor in the passing of civil rights legislation in the 1960s. No reporting was more significant than the three major television network’s coverage of Bloody Sunday on March 7, 1965.
The visual images of brutal police beatings of protesters attempting to march peacefully that day from Selma, Alabama, to Montgomery, Alabama, were crucial to the American public understanding the extent of violence being used against peaceful protesters. That awakening was pivotal to swaying national opinion. Soon thereafter, Congress passed the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Newspaper editors and publishers likewise played a critical role in identifying racial discrimination. Ralph McGill at the Atlanta Constitution and Hodding Carter II at the Delta-Democrat Times in Mississippi were among those journalists advocating racial tolerance in the mid-20th century. The work of such white editors drew attention around the nation and resulted in them winning Pulitzer Prizes.
“What has been less heralded is the crucial role Black-owned newspapers played in identifying racial discrimination and bolstering Black families.”
What has been less heralded is the crucial role Black-owned newspapers played in identifying racial discrimination and bolstering Black families.
Through its reporting and editorializing, the Chicago Defender brought to readers’ attention the beatings of Black protesters. It chronicled the rise and work of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. And it editorialized about the growing split between those in the Civil Rights Movement who championed non-violence and those who did not.
Ethel Payne, who became one of the Chicago Defender’s most well-known journalists, covered pivotal moments like desegregation of the University of Alabama, the Brown v. Board of Education decision, and the 1963 March on Washington. As the newspaper’s Washington bureau chief, Payne was the second Black woman to join the White House press corps, where she often pressed national leaders on racial discrimination issues. Payne had a direct view of civil rights legislation unfolding in the middle 1960s, so when Lyndon B. Johnson spotted her at his signing of the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act, the president handed her one of his signing pens.
The Pittsburgh Courier, which later became known as the New Pittsburgh Courier, printed multiple regional editions across the country in the 1950s. The paper reported on pivotal moments like the 1954 Brown v. Board decision and emerging civil rights leaders.
Similarly, magazines like Jet and Ebony chronicled the stories and culture of Black Americans after World War II. And in states across the South, Black publications like the Atlanta Daily World, the Oklahoma Eagle, and the Arkansas State Press promoted business opportunities for Black citizens, celebrated triumphs, reported racial injustices, and editorialized for greater equalities.
These and other Black-owned publications provided their readers news and commentary during a turbulent period. But their greatest contribution may have been to support their communities while showing the public inequities that needed addressing.
Journalism’s role in American life has never been without controversy or imperfection. But it has been seminal to chronicling events, holding leaders accountable, and advocating for ideas and values by which American can govern itself. The postwar period from 1950 to 2000 was no exception.
Samuel Rodick, a SMU senior and Tower Center Scholar, contributed research to this report.
