The Nixon Memo

Abstract

The following paper by Marvin Kalb, Director of the Shorenstein Barone Center and Edward R. Murrow Professor of Press and Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government, was first presented as the keynote address at the Center's fifth anniversary celebrations. It provides an ideal example of the complexity of press/politics interaction, and of the way in which tired images of the press as invisible and non-participating observer cannot begin to capture the intricacies of the modem relationship between the press and politics. Moreover, it offers a prime example of one of the methodologies I have just mentioned, because in so successfully using the method of the case study it both adds to our understanding in its own right and furnishes a vehicle for others, with other methodologies, to use to add to our understanding from quite different perspectives.