Press: Newswatch Thomas Griffith Watergate: a Poor Parallel

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Such spirited fun disturbed David S. Broder, the Post's chief political correspondent, who severely chided Kinsley but not Bradlee. Broder linked Kinsley with Patrick J. Buchanan, the irascible White House director of communications, as two juveniles playing mock war games, while the "grownups recognize this disaster for what it is, a calamity for the nation." So stuffy an outburst is rare for Broder, but it illustrates an attitude common this time in press coverage. Print all the facts you can find (often in numbing detail), but mute the rhetoric. It is as if journalists, as well as opposition politicians, want to avoid appearing guilty of "breaking another President," knowing that their own reputations are also somehow at stake, along with those of the President and the President's men.