"Neil, the government wouldn't tap the phones of American Reporters"

[jim bell]

At 09:11 PM 6/11/96 -0700, Bill Stewart wrote:
>"Neil, the government wouldn't tap the phones of American Reporters"
>- Hedrick Smith to his NYT colleague Neil Sheehan, while working
>on the Pentagon Papers project - he was incorrect, and his phones
>_were_ being tapped....
>
>CSPAN-2 is doing a 25-year retrospective on the Pentagon Papers this week;
>Daniel Ellsberg, Hedrick Smith, and others were on tonight,
>with people from other sides on later this week.  Cool show so far!
>

While I didn't pay any appreciable attention to the Pentagon Papers case at 
the time, it is worth noting that the only reason that it "occurred" 
(appeared in the media) was that a few reporters decided it was worth 
opposing the government.  Today, this stuff would just pop up on the 
Internet without the approval or participation of the media:  Obviously, 
this is a vast reduction of the influence of the media, and a corresponding 
increase in the power of the individual.  _THIS_ is the kind of thing that 
the government fears; it has cultivated its relationships with the news 
media for many decades, and doesn't want circumstances to change.

The Watergate incident is yet another one of those things which might not 
have "happened" without media people inclined to do it then, but that is no 
longer the truth today.


Jim Bell
jimbell at pacifier.com