Waterworks went full blast on the couch this week.
We don’t do crying there. It hurts the eyes so we prefer to fix stuff rather than cry about it.
The last two times it happened ‒ and these, pardon the pun ‒ were howlers when my beautiful little sister and my big beloved lab Teena died. It was ugly.
This week was totally unexpected; it started with a push of a green button and shameful ignorance.
Last week The Washington Post carried an obituary for Daniel Ellsburg. Curious, I read more. I was only 10 when he became famous in 1971, but that’s no excuse: I know about Richard Nixon and his humiliating post-Watergate resignation in 1974.
I was ashamed I did not know what the Pentagon Papers were and how their leaking exposed the US government’s decades of lies about the Vietnam War and led to a landmark press freedom legal ruling. When arguably the world’s most powerful government at the time lost its case against a free press, the Fourth Estate had a new cornerstone.
Briefly, Ellsberg leaked the top-secret study of the war across several administrations that showed the state had lied to the public about the reasons for the war and that they knew it could not be won. Tens of thousands of US soldiers and millions of Vietnamese people died for nothing.
Having tried many legal channels to reveal the lies and stop the war, Ellsberg carried the vast volumes of files, bit by bit, out of his office in his briefcase, photocopied every page and started leaking them to the New York Times and then The Washington Post. A court order granted to the government stopped further stories, but the two papers turned to the Supreme Court to overturn the gag while still working the story.
The saga was the basis for the factional 2017 film called The Post, which I tracked down this weekend.
I was engrossed. Not only with the press freedom theme, but with The Washington Post owner Katharine Graham’s courage. She was a lone woman in a world of powerful men looking only at the bottom line. She stood to lose everything if she gave the okay to publish before the court ruled.
All was set up on the presses: they only needed Graham’s “go” to push the green button for their midnight deadline.
The button was pushed, the alarm sounded to alert the machine minders and the roar began. Cut to a scene in the newsroom: a lone reporter banging away on a typewriter stops typing and lifts his head as the vibration from the massive presses passes through the building.
That was all I needed for the tears to start rolling too.
Being in the machine room when the presses turn blank paper into something valuable has always been powerful and emotional for me, and my duties took me there often.
I was surprised at the visceral reaction to these scenes, but it felt like another death. I still don’t understand exactly what I was mourning; for now, the presses still turn.
Perhaps it’s because so many people are more interested in the antics of the celebs and socialites than brave whistle-blowers who are exiled or eliminated. Or fall for the torrent of lies and disinformation because these confirm their own beliefs. Or that much of the media lacks the teeth to meaningfully hold the world’s powerful to account.
It is something to really cry about.
- Lindsay Slogrove is the news editor.
The Independent on Saturday