Recently my youngest grandson inadvertently reminded me that I am old, very old. Not that I often forget it.

He was telling me about the research paper he was writing in his history class. It was to him, I suppose, ancient history. But I remember it well, along with millions of my fellow citizens who were alive at the time. His subject was the media’s impact on the resignation of Richard Nixon.

I was proud that he seemed to have such a clear understanding of a time so different from his own. The year 2024 is indeed a great distance from 1974. We are, in many ways, a different country and a different people. He seemed to understand that and was grappling with the comparisons of politics and media then and now.

The discussion caused me to consider those differences from an old person’s perspective, someone who had actually experienced both, and while my grandson is striving to maintain a very even-handed account of what happened during Watergate without drawing obvious contrasts I found that I had no such qualms. I think the contrasts show the degradation of both the media and our political system, and as a certified Liberal, I blame most of that degradation on the descent and demise of the Republican party. I’ll leave it to those on the other side to provide examples of the failures of the Democrats.

For those who have managed to push all memory of Watergate from their consciousness, here’s a quick recap: Nixon, who had sailed into his second term with a very high approval rating (68%) had already survived one scandal. His vice-president, Spyro Agnew (of  “nattering nabobs of negativity” fame), had resigned in disgrace after being indicted for corruption charges. Nixon appointed Gerald Ford as his replacement.

Then, news of the Watergate Burglary broke. A group of Republican operatives attempted to break into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Hotel. Actually, this was their second trip, required because the wiretap they installed the first time didn’t work. They were caught in the act and arrested. Thus began a series of illegal acts by President Nixon and others in the White House, including obstruction of justice and presidential abuse of power.

While Nixon was denying complicity in the crime, Bob  Woodward and Carl Bernstein, along with their informant “Deep Throat,” were busy proving him to be a liar. The Washington Post led the story, followed closely by the New York Times. Big-city newspapers covered the crime, the coverup, and the hearings. Nixon, cornered by his own voice on tape, resigned, and Gerald Ford, a man who had never run in (much less won) a national election, became president of the United States.

Here, we find the first of the differences between the world of then and the world of now. In Nixon’s case, leading members of his own party went to him and told him, given the impeachment he was about to face, that it would be good for the country, the party, and Nixon himself to resign. Nixon resigned and shortly after was pardoned by Ford. Many White House staffers, including Chuck Colson, Donald Segretti, John Dean, H.R. Handelman, John Mitchell, and Jeb Magruder, went to prison, some for months, some longer.

Certainly, the Republicans wanted to protect their own, but not at the expense of their party and their country. Contrast that with the Republican senators during the first Trump impeachment. The senators were given testimony from the House impeachment hearings that said Trump had told the president of Ukraine that he needed to go to a microphone and say he is opening investigations of Biden and 2016 election interference, and that President Zelensky was to do this himself.” At that time, Trump was holding up military aid to Ukraine. The Republican-majority Senate voted not to hear testimony at the impeachment trial because—according to one senator—the House had provided all the evidence the Senate needed. Then, along party lines, they failed to convict Trump. Since then, by protecting congressmen such as Jim Jordon, Matt Gaetz, and even Santos (until they decided the smell was too great even for them), they have consistently put party over country, power over ethics, and self-interest over any concept of decency. They are now the party of Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lorraine Bobart, and others who have no interest in governing.

But they couldn’t have done it by themselves. Which brings us to the second contrast between the world of then and the world of now: the media.

When Bernstein and Woodward were making daily headlines working for one of the nation’s largest newspapers, they were part of a long tradition of journalists. There were rules, and the successful reporter followed them. Those who didn’t found themselves without a platform and a job. Unless you worked for one of the tabloid rags, such as the National Enquirer, you simply didn’t make things up and try to pass them off as news. You confirmed what you were peddling as facts.

This was aided by the fact that it cost a lot of money to publish a paper, or put a radio or TV station on the air.

All that changed with the internet. Now, anyone with a computer can have a worldwide reach, and anyone can say anything they want to, subject sometimes to the laws of libel and slander.

So we have a nationwide cable channel that has news in its name defending itself in court with the argument that its most popular talking head “made comments that cannot be reasonably interpreted as facts.” The same channel settled a lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems for $787 million because most of its roster of talking heads made false statements about Dominion even though they knew the statements weren’t true.

And these same heads continue to talk even after they cost their employer three-quarters of a billion dollars.

Obviously, times change.

There are, of course, a lot of other changes over the last fifty years that we could talk about, some good, some not so good, but just these two should be enough to keep you awake at night.

So the question is: who are you going to believe? And in this day and time, the answer is easy. In a world that seems to have dismissed the concepts of right and wrong, choosing to use the measure of Right and Left instead, and in a world that is a forest of competing and unsubstantiated claims, we believe the ones who support our prejudices and biases.

We have obviously lost our way.