Pulitzer Prize Winner, Jack Anderson:
Celebrating America’s Premier Muckraker
By Mark Feldstein
Editor’s note:
Our dear friend, Jack Anderson, who played a key role in starting
Meridian Magazine, died Saturday, December 17, at his Maryland
home of Parkinson’s disease. When we only had an idea of starting
an online magazine, he was not only encouraging, but lent his
considerable reputation to our efforts and wrote a regular column
from the beginning until he was too sick to do so anymore. We
will always remember our long talks that went well until 2:00
a.m. because Jack was such a night owl. He is mentor and friend
and we will miss him profoundly. Today, we run this tribute written
on the occasion of his 80th birthday by Mark Feldstein,
his biographer.
Maurine Proctor
Syndicated columnist
Jack Anderson turned 80 this month. His family, friends, work
colleagues, and church brethren tried to surprise him with a dinner
and tribute in his honor. But the veteran investigative journalist
did what he became famous for during a half-century of reporting
in the nation’s capital: he found a leak and learned of the secret
plans in advance.
Nonetheless, Anderson seemed genuinely
touched by the outpouring of affection in his honor. More than
150 people turned out for the event at the Marriott Hotel in the
suburbs of Washington, D.C. Many flew thousands of miles to attend
— from as far away as Utah, California, even Alaska. The granddaddy
of American muckraking was toasted by his daughter Tanya Neider
and his longtime top reporter Les Whitten, among others, but Anderson
himself made no public speeches. Ailing with Parkinson’s disease
and cancer, he now shuns the limelight in a manner that would
have been unthinkable earlier in his career. But his mind can
still be razor sharp and he cheerfully held court seated in the
front of the reception, smiling in a red jacket and matching suspenders.
I first met Jack Anderson nearly
30 years ago, when I was a barely paid student intern in his Washington
newsroom. At the time, my personal contact with the columnist
was minimal — I was too inexperienced and he was too busy for
it to be otherwise — but I absorbed the spirit of joyful muckraking
that permeated his office. I went on to a journalism career of
my own and lost touch with him, until two years ago when I began
a career in academia and decided to write his biography. It has
been a fascinating and deeply rewarding experience at both a professional
and personal level.
Anderson’s career has spanned literally
half a century, from Harry Truman’s presidency to the present.
During his heyday, he was probably the most powerful and feared
journalist in the United States. Anderson’s daily “Washington
Merry-Go-Round” column of investigative reporting was published
in nearly 1,000 newspapers, more than any other columnist, with
an estimated readership of forty million people. The Pulitzer-winning
reporter reached millions more through daily network radio and
television programs, his own private newsletter, books, and speeches.
Anderson’s specialty was the investigative
exposé, often based on classified government documents provided
by a cultivated network of confidential sources. His disclosures
of political wrongdoing led to resignations and prison terms by
officials in Washington. At the height of his influence, during
Richard Nixon’s presidency, Anderson’s relentless reporting exposed
scandals that eventually led to the criminal convictions of two
Nixon Cabinet members and portions of articles of impeachment
against the President. In response, the Nixon administration illegally
used the Central Intelligence Agency to spy on Anderson and his
staff and family. The Nixon White House also attempted to smear
the Mormon father of nine as a homosexual, and at one point even
plotted to assassinate him with poison.
Not surprisingly, most opinion about
the columnist has been quite polarized. To Washington's power
elite, Anderson was an object of derision, an uncouth gossip-monger
and self-promoter whose hyped-up prose and shoot-from-the-hip
style were considered ungentlemanly in the snobbish drawing rooms
of the nation's capital. Certainly Anderson engaged in a unorthodox
techniques in pursuit of his quarry — rifling through trash, eavesdropping
on private conversations, bluffing sources with a combination
of flattery and intimidation.
What has often been missed in all
of this, I believe, is an appreciation of Anderson’s role in the
historical evolution of American investigative reporting and the
religious influence he has brought to bear upon it.
In many respects, Anderson and his
mentor, columnist Drew Pearson, were descendants of the original
crusading muckrakers of the Progressive Era. These journalists
were reformers not revolutionaries who wanted to improve the system
not by overthrowing it but by exposing its failings. The muckrakers
of a century ago bore an unmistakable religious influence, shaped
by their optimistic beliefs in honesty, individualism, and personal
responsibility.
After the era of the muckrakers ended
in the 1920s, the Quaker Pearson and the Mormon Anderson continued
to uphold the muckraking tradition at a time when almost no one
else was doing such reporting. Eventually, with the political
and social changes brought on by the Vietnam War and Watergate,
investigative reporting became fashionable once again. But throughout
the “Dark Ages” of the middle of the twentieth century, Anderson
played a crucial role in helping keep investigative journalism
alive at a time when it required enormous bravery to do so.
I believe that Anderson’s Mormon
faith is an important element in his journalistic success. He
grew up on the outskirts of Salt Lake City, in Cottonwood, Utah,
the grandson of an enormous stern brickmaker with a long Old Testament
beard who fathered seventeen children with four wives. Jack’s
parents were orthodox Latter-day Saints. His father worked for
the post
office. Jack’s mother, Agnes Northam Mortensen, was born in
Denmark but converted by Mormon missionaries there and emigrated
to Utah as a teenager. She drove a taxicab to pay for Jack’s mission
in the rural South.
Anderson views investigative reporting
as a calling from God, whom he believes inspired our Constitution
and its First Amendment. “The Mormon church believes that the
eternal struggle is not only between good and evil,” he told me,
“but between force and freedom. And so I carry that.” This view
was reflected in his column, along with a justifiable suspicion
of government, which had once persecuted his ancestors. This,
too, would become a critical theme in Anderson’s journalistic
career as he exposed governmental abuses.
Perhaps most of all, Anderson’s deep
religious roots were an anchor in the nation’s capital, a city
where opportunism all too often defeats idealism. Anderson’s Mormon
background helped insulate him from these shallow, status-conscious
values inside the Beltway, freeing him to take an outsider’s view.
“On numerous occasions, I have thanked my pragmatic parents, who
taught me not to put too much stock in the accolades of men,”
he later wrote. “I would have folded fifty years ago had I worried
about winning popularity contests.”
Whatever his faults, Anderson was
a critically important check on governmental power during a time
when few other reporters even tried to hold officials accountable.
Indeed, his old-fashioned muckraking exploits provide a telling
contrast to the current corporate climate in today's ever-consolidating
media world. Anderson was one of the last of a dying breed of
independent journalists who answered only to his own personal
sense of right and wrong, not to any publisher maneuvering for
marketing position.
As someone who is a member of the
Jewish faith, I cannot pretend to understand all of the dimensions
of the Mormon influence on Anderson and his reporting. I have
tried to learn all I can about the Latter Day Saints, and I have
attended church with Anderson in Washington. But I welcome any
input from those more knowledgeable about the subject. I would
particularly enjoy hearing from anyone who knew Jack or his family
during their years in Salt Lake City and Washington.
In any case, here’s to you, Jack
Anderson. Happy 80th birthday. Washington needs more journalists
like you.
