Katherine Graham and the Washington Post

As the first female publisher of a major U.S. newspaper—The Washington Post—Katherine Graham made her mark in American history, not only for being at the helm of one of the nation’s most prominent papers but also for leading the paper through its coverage of one of the most controversial moments in U.S. history—Watergate. Graham’s story would go on to be told in film by Steven Spielberg, Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks in the Academy Award nominated film The Post. It was Graham’s refusal to bow to pressure from the highest office in the land, the White House, that earned her the legacy she has achieved. Known as a stalwart, a fighter for free press, and—at the end of the day—a true reporter, Graham displays all of these qualities in her memoir Personal History, where she explicitly acknowledges the characteristic about her that made her such an indomitable spirit in an era when the powers that be were crushing everything they could: “This project has renewed my appreciation for the value of archival material. I have spent innumerable hours poring over old letters and memos from and between my parents, my husband, and myself, as well as communications involving Post and Newsweek executives and editors” (Graham, 1998, p. viii). Emanating from that dedication to getting the facts straight, to “poring over old letters” in order to tell the story truthfully, is the story—the essence—of Katherine Graham. This paper will provide a biography of Katherine Graham in order to show why her place in American history is owed to her commitment to setting the record straight.

From the very beginning, Graham was different from others. Her father was Jewish—his family from Alsace-Loraine (that oft-fought over stretch of land between France and Germany that was the cause of so many conflicts and wars). Her mother was German Lutheran. Born in 1917, the year the U.S. entered WWI, as Katherine “Kay” Meyer, she was baptized in the Lutheran church and raised as an Episcopalian. Her life was unlike those who made up the majority of American life—Main Street America, as it is called. Her family owned several homes. Graham’s father had succeeded very well for himself in America as a financier and a familiar face on Wall Street. He purchased The Washington Post in 1933 when Graham was just 16 years old. He had no intention at the time of handing it off to her when she grew up, nor did she ever think it to happen (Graham, 1998). As a child, Graham was often left in the care of a governess, her parents often traveling or socializing among the American elite. Graham attended the Madeira School, Vassar and then the University of Chicago. At college, she began to take a strong interest in activist issues, such as labor. Here she developed a sense of right and wrong in the real world—meeting other people from other walks of life, learning their struggles, and understanding the obstacles they faced in daily life. Her first job in journalism came with the San Francisco News (Falcone, 2018), where she worked a year before the paper folded. With this background and these new experiences, at 21 years of age, Graham began working for her father’s paper The Post.

Katherine married Philip Graham in 1940 and her husband took over as publisher of The Post in 1946 when her father gave up his role as head of the paper. When Phil died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound in 1963, the consensus opinion among Washington elites was that Graham would sell the paper. She did not. She wanted to run it. It was the 1960s: life was changing dramatically all across the U.S.—and having developed an interest in the lives of everyday Americans, everyday issues, and now having the opportunity to reflect those issues and struggles in a major newspaper, Graham was not going to give it up.

The newspaper business was a male dominated industry, already lampooned by Howard Hawks, Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell in the 1940 film His Girl Friday. While in that film, Grant runs the paper and Russell acts as his writer, Graham would pull a role reversal for the first time in American history in the news industry: she would run the paper and her writers would be men like Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward—the journalists who broke the Watergate story wide open with their Deepthroat contact, who gave them the inside scoop on the scandal that rocked the Nixon presidency in the 1970s (Bernstein & Woodward, 1974). They represented the kind of dedication to the facts, to the real story, that Graham wanted to promote. At the Washington Post, Graham gave them the chance to tell the real story--in spite of the intense pressure she faced from within her very own community.

Graham’s most significant accomplishment was not just the fact that she took over as head of The Post at a time when no other woman was doing anything like it; her most significant accomplishment was that she did not back down from the Washington politicians, movers and shakers who threatened her with extinction when she decided to run the story that would shape the latter half of the 20th century and blow the lid off Washington politics forever (Graham, 1998). Her commitment to honest reporting and to telling the story drove her to stand by her reporters and to not give up the paper to someone who would let the politicians off the hook. She allowed the two most famous reporters in American history—Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward—to tell their story to the world through The Post. It was unprecedented.

By the 1970s, the landscape of America was changing and Graham began to represent the new Women’s Movement—the power that women could have in society. Other women like Betty Friedan, author of The Feminine Mystique, and Gloria Steinhem, founder of Ms. Magazine, were at the forefront of the Women’s Movement in the latter half of the 20th century. Graham was a stalwart behind the scenes, running the Post and proving that women could do just as well as men in a “man’s world.” Just as Friedan showed that women did not have to live in the kitchen (Horowitz, 1998), Graham showed that women did not have to bow to men in positions of power. Her refusal to bow to Nixon and back off the Watergate story helped to ignite a socio-political bonfire that resulted in the resignation of the President of the United States. Her story is one of a woman, committed to obtaining the real story, to sticking to the facts, to telling the truth, to ensuring that her paper acted as an archive of information—of history. She stood at the front of The Post, like a guardian at the gates of this country’s story, vowing that the story would be told fairly and honestly in spite of whatever condemnations and pressures she faced from those on high.

America is different because of the influence of and dedication to the real story that Katherine Graham demonstrated as head of The Post throughout her tenure. Had she decided to give up the newspaper when her husband died instead of opting to run it herself; or had she backed off the story of Watergate because of the threats that Washington aimed at her, America might never have known the truth about the Washington politics, the corruption, and the intrigue during the Nixon Era.

Graham demonstrated the power of the press during this time and showed how a newspaper can break a president simply by sticking to the facts and telling the truth. She showed how journalistic integrity and the duties of responsible reporting can help everyday Americans to better understand how those in positions of power are wielding their authority. She helped usher in the era of the technological citizenship—the truth-seekers who use research, investigative journalism, the press, and one another to find out the real story of events that shape the American landscape.