Enough Throat!

While I think the coverage of the whole Deep Throat story has swung between idolization of The Post (which the paper has been most guilt of) to just flat out skewering, the better stories have following the long trail of speculation The Throat's identity and how it was apparently a secret to everybody.

Not to miss a beat, Howard Kurtz, The Post's media reporter (known affectionally there as Howie and considered inside the Beltway as the most powerful dude in media), lays out the real the consequences of The Throat and journalism post-Watergate:

"Journalism became a more confrontational, even prosecutorial business, with some of its practitioners automatically assuming that politicians in the post-Nixon era must be lying, dissembling or covering up."

I think that my generation of journalists takes a different view of public figures than the editors and reporters today who came of age in the shadow of Woodstein but they also have a disaffection that may prove to be just as dangerous.