Corrections or additions?
This column by Richard K. Rein was prepared for the May 28, 2003
edition of U.S. 1 Newspaper. All rights reserved.
Richard K. Rein: On Deep Throat and Jayson Blair
Here’s a small world story about "Deep Throat,"
the epic porn movie of the early 1970s as well as the anonymous source
quoted by reporters Woodward and Bernstein when they were putting
together their Watergate case against President Nixon and all his
men. It stretches from the Princeton-Route 1 corridor to my old
hometown,
Binghamton, New York, and — in my mind, at least — to the
New York Times and the highly imaginative but now discredited news
reporter, Jayson Blair.
The first call came in about two weeks ago, from a woman identifying
herself as a researcher for a documentary film company in Hollywood,
California, World of Wonder (www.worldofwonder.net). The company is
doing a documentary on the movie, released in 1972, and hopes to
chronicle
the many obscenity trials triggered by the film and to show the impact
that this film had on the country. In Princeton, she explained, the
movie had one of its most successful runs — at the old Prince
Theater on Route 1. While some people demanded that the movie be shut
down, the county prosecutor, Bruce Schragger, declined to pursue the
matter.
The producers already had Schragger lined up for an interview, but
they hoped to catch up with others who were caught up in the Deep
Throat hoopla. That’s why the researcher was calling newspapers such
as U.S. 1.
But Princeton was only one destination for the filmmakers. For the
small world part of this story another one turned out to be
Binghamton,
in upstate New York, where the reception was much more chilly. There
the prosecutors took the theater operators to court for an obscenity
trial that ended with an acquittal — just a few days before
Christmas
in 1972.
The Prince theater on Route 1. The Art and Strand theaters in
Binghamton,
New York. Even though I never saw the movie, I couldn’t help but offer
the documentary filmmakers my own opinion of Deep Throat’s impact
on the cultural landscape, particularly the practice of journalism.
Deep Throat the movie, I told the researcher, was an in-your-face
cultural icon — you could either play it by the rules of the day
and prosecute it as obscenity, or you could ignore the letter of the
law and allow the spirit of free expression to flourish. After all,
movies such as Deep Throat were not unknown in 1972; they simply
weren’t
being shown in popular movie theaters like those on Main Street in
Binghamton or Route 1 in Princeton.
By picking Deep Throat as the pseudonym for their great anonymous
source, the critical collaborating source that allowed Woodward and
Bernstein to publish materials that their editors otherwise might
have quashed, the reporters stuck a powerful, in-your-face cultural
icon into the editorial equation. Would Ben Bradlee and the other
editors at the Washington Post play it by the rules and insist on
named sources to collaborate the allegations, or would they allow
their reporters the spirit of free expression? Would they, in effect,
handle it like the prosecutor in Binghamton, New York, or the one
in Mercer County, New Jersey?
The liberal approach won out, and Woodward and Bernstein ended up
deposing a president of the United States. Since then the identity
of Deep Throat has never been revealed — one of few Washington
secrets that has ever lasted. My own theory is simple: Deep Throat
never existed — it was simply a device that Woodward and Bernstein
used to get around the restrictive reporting rules of their editors.
And ever since then reporters have played this card: Attributing
sensitive
information to sources so important, so sensitive, so deep, that their
names must never be revealed — not in a story and not even in
private to the editors. So I was not surprised when I read the New
York Times’ account of the Jayson Blair. On at least two occasions,
the young reporter hung major stories on unnamed sources.
In one of those cases, the official being covered in the story
objected
so vehemently to Blair’s coverage that he called a press conference
to assert that the Times reporter could not have had any reliable
source at all — too much of the information reported was "dead
wrong." But Blair defended his reporting — and the editors
never demanded that he reveal his sources.
As the producers of the documentary will undoubtedly report, Deep
Throat star Linda Lovelace later condemned her life as a porn movie
star and testified on the dangers of pornography before a commission
headed by Reagan conservative Ed Meese. When she died in a car
accident
in 2002, she was considered a radical feminist.
Back in 1972 opponents of Deep Throat must have cited the impact the
movie would have on impressionable minds. And some of the media must
have argued that was too simplistic and unfounded. A bright young
man like Jayson Blair never would assume that all women are like the
character in Deep Throat. As a journalistic icon, however, Deep Throat
seems to have made its mark indeed. But this is just an opinion —
sadly I have no sources to back me up.
Corrections or additions?
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— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
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