BY CARRIE ANDERSEN AND ELIZABETH MCEVOY

From Watergate to Monica Lewinsky, political scandals seem to bloom during presidential second terms like cherry blossoms along the Potomac . Present times are no exception: witness the Plame case, which has resulted in the indictment of Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, for lying to a grand jury investigating the possible outing of an undercover CIA agent. President Bush’s poll numbers took a hit over the summer and fall thanks at least in part to the investigation, leading some pundits to compare the case, explicitly or implicitly, to Watergate. Yet despite the similarities between the two scandals, the media have played very different roles in each. In fact, a comparison between the two reveals the threats the Plame case poses to the media’s role in society.

Watergate Nostalgia

Watergate is usually portrayed as an example of journalistic heroism against a corrupt administration. Two reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, won the Pulitzer Prize in the Public Service category for uncovering a broad network of corruption within the Nixon administration. Martin Kalb, a former senior fellow at the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy, argued that “the reporting of Woodward and Bernstein represents a milestone of journalism,” since it convinced federal investigators to look into the matter, leading directly to Nixon’s resignation. Given the glorification of the role of media and investigative journalism in Watergate—extending even into the realm of pop culture in movies like All the President’s Men—it makes sense that the public can sometimes long for such a David and Goliath story.

But it is not at all clear that this nostalgia for the golden years of journalism in the 1970s can ever be realized. The Plame case takes place in a very different era of media coverage than existed thirty years ago. Citizens no long have to rely on large newspapers to uncover scandals and report daily news, but now have access to online blogs and a never-ending news cycle. Alex Jones, director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, told the HPR that he believes that bloggers have added a “whole new dimension” to investigative journalism. In a sense, they have democratized it and taken away its mystical aura: one need look no further than the controversy that erupted last fall, in which bloggers exposed as forgeries documents that cast aspersions on President Bush’s military records.

Investigative Journalism of the Future

In the case of Valerie Plame, sharply contrasting with the Watergate scandal, the media is not glorified—rather, investigative journalism has become a scandal in itself. Bob Luskin, the attorney for Bush aide Karl Rove, does not look favorably upon journalists’ coverage concerning the Plame case, telling the HPR that they “initially swallowed the core allegations hook, line, and sinker” and sensationalized the investigation. He also notes that “for at least some of the media, their involvement [in the case] has distorted their coverage.” His sentiments are shared by many who believe that journalists were pushing too hard for a big story, and that the investigation is in part the by-product of their overzealousness.

Perhaps worse, the work of special prosecutors to subpoena a journalist’s notes resulted in the incarceration of one reporter—Judith Miller of the New York Times—and could have monumental ramifications in the future, especially in considering her decision to talk. Jones worries about the implications of exposing investigative records of a journalist: “The Plame case may have the effect of killing [investigative journalism] because of the idea that prosecutors and lawyers can subpoena journalist’s notes.” Appearing at the JFK, Jr. Forum at Harvard, Bernstein agreed, contending that subpoenas are “a really bad thing for journalism.” If the media cannot continue to ask hard-hitting questions and dig into political scandal because of their fear of subpoenas, the possibility of a return to the Watergate-era heyday of journalism is even more remote. Not all commentators share Jones’s and Bernstein's fears—but there is no doubt that if journalists can no longer fill their role of the public’s watchdog, the media’s already-declining reputation among the public will suffer further.