(Spear, 1984, p. 185). It became apparent that Nixon wanted to reduce the power of the American free press. In particular, he wanted to put restrictions on what the media would be allowed to report regarding the actions of the President. In retrospect, it is ironic that Nixon made this effort directly prior to the media revelations which would lead to his downfall.
Far worse than his negative attitude toward the news media was Nixon's willingness to endorse illegal practices in the Republican fight against the Democratic election campaign. This willingness first started coming to light in June 1972, when five men were caught trying to place wiretaps in the Democratic National Committee Headquarters. Immediately after the arrest of the Watergate burglars, the Washington Post ran an article on the situation and thereby brought national attention to the case. The first reporter on the Washington Post to be assigned to the Watergate break-in was Bob Woodward. Woodward was also the first journalist to suggest a connection between the attempted wiretapping and the Republican's Committee to Re-Elect the President. As the case developed, Woodward was joined by Carl Bernstein, another investigative reporter on the Washington Post staff. However, by the end of June, the editorial staff at the Post decided that the case was not important enough to turn into a full-scale media event. In fact, at that time, neither the broadcast media nor the press media considered the Watergate story to be worthy of much attention. In general, the media chose to treat the Watergate break-in "as a commonplace criminal event" (Kutler 1990, p. 255). For the most part, the nation's newspapers placed their stories regarding the issue on inside pages rather than front pages. Of the three major television networks, only one hired a person to full-time coverage of the story, and "fewer than 15 of the more than 430 reporters in Washington news bureaus for dif...