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This article is republished from\u00a0The Conversation<\/a>\u00a0under a Creative Commons license. Read the\u00a0original article<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n In his White House Correspondents\u2019 Association dinner speech on July 24, 2026,\u00a0President Donald Trump made his usual diatribes against the news media<\/a>. He derided the \u201cfailing\u201d New York Times and reiterated his complaint that CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins doesn\u2019t smile enough. He dismissed the award she received at the dinner as \u201cfake\u201d and celebrated the\u00a0recent firing of top CBS News employees<\/a>.<\/p>\n Such ongoing extreme hostility from the president has contributed to Americans\u2019 loss of faith in the news media, which has\u00a0plummeted to an all-time low<\/a>.<\/p>\n While the situation is in many ways unique to this moment, a perceived crisis around the very notion of \u201cobjective reporting\u201d \u2013 and presidential use of that idea to denigrate and delegitimize the press \u2013 has a long history.<\/p>\n Republican presidential candidate Richard Nixon, for example,\u00a0attacked coverage of police brutality<\/a>\u00a0at the 1968 Chicago Democratic National Convention as one-sided in favor of antiwar protestors. Once in office, Nixon deployed Vice President Spiro Agnew to\u00a0verbally assault journalists for their putative bias and elitism<\/a>.<\/p>\n In an infamous 1969 speech, Agnew denounced TV newsmen \u2013 they were, indeed, mostly men \u2013 as \u201can effete corps of impudent snobs<\/a>,\u201d hostile to the president and therefore out of touch with average Americans. Agnew singled out NBC anchorman David Brinkley for his claim that \u201cobjectivity is impossible\u201d and that \u201cfairness\u201d was a more reasonable objective<\/a>. Like many journalists, Brinkley understood \u201cobjectivity\u201d as implying an almost mechanical delivery of pure facts, while \u201cfairness\u201d was more realistic, an earnest effort to be judicious.<\/p>\n Agnew concluded with a challenge<\/a>: People should \u201clet the networks know<\/a>\u00a0that they want their news straight and objective.\u201d He framed this populist turn as an alternative to government interference. But\u00a0journalists felt the looming threat of censorship<\/a>.<\/p>\n Brinkley\u2019s statement was not impudent. It was realistic: an acknowledgment that journalists are humans with preconceptions and values, but that their professional mandate is to strive for impartiality.<\/p>\n Carefully balanced reporting was not only the baseline of journalists\u2019 training but also a business imperative. There were\u00a0only three national nightly news shows<\/a>, all seeking the widest possible audience. Moderation was more profitable than swinging hard left or right.<\/p>\n Although frustrated with journalism in general, Agnew zeroed in on TV in his speech because it had displaced print as\u00a0Americans\u2019 leading news source<\/a>. And the reality of Federal Communications Commission licensing, whereby a federal agency determined who could use publicly owned airwaves, made\u00a0broadcasters vulnerable<\/a>\u00a0to the actions of a vengeful president.<\/p>\n The licensing issue still resonates. Comedian Jimmy Kimmel, a frequent Trump critic, had his show briefly suspended by ABC\u00a0after angering the president\u2019s supporters<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWe can do this\u00a0the easy way or the hard way<\/a>,\u201d FCC chair Brandon Carr said. \u201cThese companies can find ways to change conduct to take action on Kimmel or, you know, there\u2019s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n Kimmel survived this attack largely because public support surged, and he continues\u00a0to satirize the White House<\/a>.\u00a0Others have been less fortunate<\/a>.<\/p>\n Struggling to compete, newspapers in the 1960s and \u201970s could have easily downplayed Agnew\u2019s criticisms of a rival medium.<\/p>\n Instead, they stood up for TV. In the course of my research, I\u2019ve found that not only in publicly accessible material but also in unpublished archival papers both\u00a0broadcasters<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0newspapers<\/a>\u00a0consistently understood an attack on one media outlet as an attack on all, a lesson that holds true in 2026.<\/p>\n One of Agnew\u2019s \u201csnobs\u201d was the liberal New York Times columnist\u00a0Tom Wicker<\/a>.\u00a0Wicker was on Nixon\u2019s \u201cenemies list<\/a>,\u201d and he voiced concerns about not just Nixon and Agnew but also more generally about the very notion of objectivity.<\/p>\n Agnew raised hackles\u00a0across the American journalism community<\/a>. But Wicker\u2019s reactions stand out in particular, because he was employed by what was then known as \u201cthe paper of record,\u201d whose grandiose credo had long been \u201cTo Give the News Impartially<\/a>, Without Fear or Favor.\u201d<\/p>\n In a column published on Nov. 16, 1969, Wicker granted that\u00a0it was legitimate for Agnew to ask<\/a>\u00a0\u201chow the power of that extraordinary medium (TV) can be most equitably controlled and exercised in the general public interest.\u201d<\/p>\n But Wicker underscored that Agnew \u201ccouched his argument in direct political attack on those who differed with Mr. Nixon\u201d and \u201ccame close to claiming immunity from criticism for Presidential utterance.\u201d<\/p>\n Two years after Agnew\u2019s \u201ceffete snobs\u201d speech, Wicker wrote an essay for Columbia Journalism Review objecting to journalism\u2019s \u201ctradition of objectivity<\/a>\u201d and \u201corientation toward nationalism in politics and toward establishmentarianism in other areas of society.\u201d<\/p>\n The consequence, he wrote, was a heavy and generally uncritical reliance on official sources, all in the name of a spurious notion of objectivity.<\/p>\n Deeply offended, New York Times executive editor Abe Rosenthal sent a\u00a0confidential memo to publisher Punch Sulzberger<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIn essence,\u201d Rosenthal wrote, \u201cwhat Tom\u2019s piece adds up to is a public statement by \u2026 a well-known columnist of the Times \u2026 that objectivity and comprehensiveness, the journalistic foundations of this paper, are no longer valid and that the kind of paper the Times is now is no longer meaningful.\u201d<\/p>\n Rosenthal said Wicker\u2019s public expression of these thoughts was \u201cbad for the paper<\/a>\u201d externally and \u201cbad for morale\u201d internally.<\/p>\n Regardless, such\u00a0disputes at The New York Times<\/a>\u00a0were always waged behind the scenes. The gold standard for journalism was \u2013 and remains, whenever possible \u2013\u00a0to tell the story<\/a>, not be the story.<\/p>\n Today, by contrast, it is widely known that the\u00a0CBS News division \u201cis on fire<\/a>,\u201d as longtime \u201c60 Minutes\u201d correspondent Scott Pelley said, shortly after he was sacked.<\/p>\n Newly installed CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss,\u00a0who has no broadcast experience<\/a>, positions herself as an advocate for \u201cfree speech and free thinking<\/a>\u201d and her Free Press newsletter as a reclamation of\u00a0objective reporting<\/a>. Yet at CBS she has made editorial choices, including killing a story highly critical of the Trump administration,\u00a0that consistently favor the White House<\/a>.<\/p>\n Like Agnew, in other words, Weiss appears to cloak uncritical acceptance of presidential positions as\u00a0a battle against \u201cbias.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n Denouncing \u201cbias\u201d is usually an attempt by those in power to deflect from what reporters have uncovered \u2013 from\u00a0Vietnam<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0Watergate<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0Iraq<\/a>. It is thus startling for someone within journalism to use the establishment\u2019s word \u2013 bias \u2013 to self-censor.<\/p>\n The apparently deliberate\u00a0imploding of CBS News<\/a>\u00a0and its\u00a0flagship investigative journalism program \u201c60 Minutes<\/a>\u201d is all the more shocking when you consider the network\u2019s past triumphs in serving the public interest while angering politicians and presidents.<\/p>\n In 1971, for example, the Army and the Nixon administration attacked \u201cThe Selling of the Pentagon<\/a>,\u201d a CBS documentary about military public relations activities. Officials charged that the editing had been misleading and malicious, and the U.S. House of Representatives\u00a0subpoenaed CBS journalists\u2019 raw footage<\/a>.<\/p>\n This congressional investigation ended as a victory for the press and the public\u2019s right to know.\u00a0CBS refused to share its outtakes<\/a>, and the network\u2019s\u00a0president risked going to jail<\/a>\u00a0for contempt of Congress.<\/p>\n In his column, Wicker declared the documentary excellent, and he correctly painted the subpoena of CBS materials\u00a0as resulting from White House pressure<\/a>.<\/p>\n That same year, The\u00a0New York Times and The Washington Post printed the Pentagon Papers<\/a>, revealing that the government had been misleading Americans for years regarding Vietnam. The two newspapers\u00a0were briefly silenced by the White House<\/a>, which persuaded the courts to order them to cease releasing the documents, and then were vindicated when the Supreme Court\u00a0barred the government from restraining publication<\/a>.<\/p>\n Wicker argued that \u201cno statute exists that says government officials must be protected from the exposure of their follies or misdeeds,\u201d and that the Pentagon Papers\u2019 culprit was the government,\u00a0not the newspapers<\/a>.<\/p>\n Here, Wicker made a fair, if not strictly objective, evaluation.<\/p>\n Such opinionated defenses of the press still ring true today. Agnew repeatedly attacked naysayers as \u201cnattering nabobs of negativism<\/a>,\u201d but journalism serves a positive function in particular when its stories are negative.<\/p>\n That\u2019s\u00a0how the public is able to hold government accountable<\/a>, and accountability is crucial to the fight for democracy and against censorship and authoritarianism.<\/p>\n Heather Hendershot<\/a> is Professor of Communication Studies and Journalism at Northwestern University<\/em>.<\/p>\n \n \tFiled Under: donald trump<\/a>, free press<\/a>, free speech<\/a>, journalism<\/a>, richard nixon<\/a>Nixon administration played hardball<\/h2>\n
Journalists fought back<\/h2>\n
Taking on \u2018objectivity\u2019<\/h2>\n
Denouncing bias as deflection<\/h2>\n
Holding government accountable<\/h2>\n
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