Volume 35, Number 21 & 22 · January 19, 1989
The Intimidated Press
By Anthony Lewis
Seventeen years ago The New York Times and then The Washington Post published the Pentagon Papers—and fought off the Nixon administration's attempts to stop further publication. Examining that episode afterward, a law review article by Professors Harold Edgar and Benno Schmidt, Jr., of the Columbia Law School said it marked 'the passing of an era' for the American press. It was an era, they said, in which there was a 'symbiotic relationship between politicians and the press.' But now, by printing the secret history of the Vietnam War over strenuous official objections, the Times had 'demonstrated that much of the press was no longer willing to be merely an occasionally critical associate [of the Government], devoted to common aims, but intended to become an adversary.'
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