Now that there is a momentary lull in the outpouring of Watergate books, another legacy of the Nixon era needs closer scrutiny. This is the notion, propagated by Richard Nixon, that Government and the press have an adversary relationship. What Nixon meant by the phrase he made perfectly clear in a letter to Spiro Agnew during the 1968 campaign: "When news is concerned, nobody in the press is a friend—they are all enemies." But why the press should have seized upon the adversary description and proudly flaunted it ever since is harder...
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