January 13, 2018
Word: The Washington Post and Vietnam
Norman Solomon, executive director, Institute for Public Accuracy: Katharine Graham’s decision to
publish the Pentagon Papers was indeed laudable, helping to expose lies
that had greased the wheels of the war machinery with such horrific
consequences in Vietnam. But the Washington Post was
instrumental in avidly promoting the lies that made the Vietnam War
possible in the first place. No amount of rave reviews or Oscar
nominations for ‘The Post’ will change that awful truth.
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2 comments:
Yes, indeed. I was a copygirl for a brief period during this crucial time in America's history. One of my fellow copygirls made the horrific mistake of hand sketching a dove on the mimeographed sheet that went upstairs (Graham and crew) with the list of the possible front page articles.
All - ahem - broke loose. Mrs. Graham herself wanted to "fire" the peon who had such audacity.
Truth is stranger than fiction.
Sapir,our greatest cultural anthropologist, created in 1917 the notion of culture as that which produces fulfilled lives. Great tribal cultures that produced a Crazy Horse or a Nanook of the North are genuine cultures whereas the urban industrial culture of the telephone operator is spurious. Within journalism a limited hangout such as the pentagon papers is spurious culture. Genuine whistleblowing is always rejected out of hand such as the verdict in the Jowers case proving the official conspiracy in the murder of MLK which went unreported and is treated as an embarrassment if mentioned, as Jim Garrison could understand. Journalism in our culture is merely gatekeeping not genuinely fulfilling as with the muckrakers or Mencken.
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