I don't pay much attention to cartoons, but today's Trever comment in the Albuquerque Journal grabbed me.
In the first panel, a Press hat-wearing reader is holding a newspaper headlined "Watergate Source Revealed." He's thinking about the press digging and uncovering and exposing in order to serve the public interest.
In the second panel, that Press hat-wearing reader sits in a toilet. That toilet is made up of "infotainment" and "low ratings" and "advocacy" and fabrication" and "gotcha reporting" and "declining readership." and "bias." And he's thinking "Those were the days."
What impresses me is what Trever left out of the toilet - journalistic timidity.
Isn't that the press's esential charactistic today?
PS Nostalgia for Watergate - I feel some of it myself - is fine, but it would be a mistake to credit the press in general for uncovering the Nixon Administration's crimes. The press didn't do it, the Washington Post did. Most newspapers and TV networks missed the story or ducked it only to join the jubilant crowd when the Post, a gutsy judge and a few whistle-blowers made it safe for them to do so.