Snip:
I mentioned a moment ago that things have changed since I was a White House correspondent. Yes, presidential administrations have become more adept at holding "access" over the heads of reporters — ask too tough a question, or too many of them, so the implicit threat goes, and you're not going to get any more interviews with high-ranking members of the administration, let alone the president. But I was covering Presidents Johnson and Nixon — men not exactly known as pushovers. No, what has changed, even more than the nature of the presidency, is the character of news ownership. I only found out years after the fact, for example, about the pressure that the Nixon White House put on my then-bosses, during Watergate — pressure to cut down my pieces, to call me off the story, and so on... because, back then, my bosses took the heat, so I didn't have to. They did this so the story could get told, and so the public could be informed.
But it is rare, now, to find a major news organization owned by an individual, someone who can say, in effect, "The buck stops here." The more likely motto now is: "The news stops... with making bucks."
