Role of the media
Which year did applications to journalism schools peak during the Watergate scandal?
Watergate scandal
John Sirica Watergate salad Watergate scandal Howard Simons Yomagate
John_Sirica-Abstract Watergate_salad-Etymology Watergate_scandal-Role_of_the_media Howard_Simons-Abstract Yomagate-Abstract
John Joseph Sirica (March 19, 1904 – August 14, 1992) was the Chief Judge for the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, where he became famous for his role in the Watergate scandal. He rose to national prominence during the Watergate scandal when he ordered President Richard Nixon to turn over his recordings of White House conversations. Sirica's involvement in the case began when he presided over the trial of the Watergate burglars. He did not believe the claim that they had acted alone, and persuaded or coerced most of them to implicate the men who had arranged the break-in (G. Gordon Liddy remained silent). For his role in Watergate the judge was named "TIME" magazine's Man of the Year in 1973. 
The origin of the name “Watergate salad” is obscure. Kraft Corporate Affairs said, "We developed the recipe for Pistachio Pineapple Delight. It was in 1975, the same year that pistachio pudding mix came out." Kraft, however, didn't refer to it as Watergate Salad until consumers started requesting the recipe for it under the name. "According to Kraft Kitchens, when the recipe for Pistachio Pineapple Delight was sent out, an unnamed Chicago food editor renamed it Watergate Salad to promote interest in the recipe when she printed it in her column." Neither the article nor editor has been tracked down, however. The Denver Post, in the Empire Magazine of June 27, 1976 published a recipe for Watergate Salad. Watergate salad was a concoction thought up by a sous chef at the Watergate Hotel, and it was then served at brunch on most weekends. Watergate Salad took off in popularity during and after the presidential scandal which shares the same name. Syndicated household advice columnists Anne Adams and Nan Nash-Cummings, in their "Anne & Nan" column of October 9, 1997 reported that name came from the similar "Watergate Cake" (which shares most of the same ingredients): "The recipes came out during the Watergate scandal. The cake has a 'cover-up' icing and is full of nuts. The salad is also full of nuts."
The connection between the break-in and the re-election committee was highlighted by media coverage — in particular, investigative coverage by "The Washington Post", "Time", and "The New York Times". The coverage dramatically increased publicity and consequent political repercussions. Relying heavily upon anonymous sources, "Post" reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein uncovered information suggesting that knowledge of the break-in, and attempts to cover it up, led deeply into the Justice Department, the FBI, the CIA, and the White House. Chief among the "Post's" anonymous sources was an individual whom Woodward and Bernstein had nicknamed Deep Throat; 33 years later, in 2005, he was confirmed to be William Mark Felt, Sr., the former deputy director of the FBI. Felt met secretly with Woodward, telling him of Howard Hunt’s involvement with the Watergate break-in, and that the White House staff regarded the stakes in Watergate extremely high. Felt warned Woodward that the FBI wanted to know where he and other reporters were getting their information, as they were uncovering a wider web of crimes than first disclosed. In one of their last meetings, all of which took place at an underground parking garage somewhere in Rosslyn, Virginia at 2:00 am, Felt cautioned Woodward that he might be followed and not to trust their phone conversations to be secure. Felt also planted leaks about Watergate to "Time" magazine, the "Washington Daily News" and other publications. "'During this early period, most of the media failed to grasp the full implications of the scandal, and concentrated reporting on other topics related to the 1972 presidential election. After the revelation that one of the convicted burglars wrote to Judge Sirica alleging a high-level coverup, the media shifted its focus. "Time" magazine described Nixon as undergoing "daily hell and very little trust". The distrust between the press and the Nixon administration was mutual and greater than usual due to lingering dissatisfaction with events from the Vietnam War. Public distrust of the media reached over 40%. Nixon and top administration officials discussed using government agencies to "get" what they perceived as hostile media organizations. The discussions had precedent. At the request of Nixon's White House in 1969, the FBI tapped the phones of five reporters. In 1971, the White House requested an audit of the tax return of the editor of "Newsday", after he wrote a series of articles about the financial dealings of a friend of the President's. The administration and its supporters accused the media of making "wild accusations", putting too much emphasis on the story, and of having a liberal bias against the Administration. Nixon said in a May 1974 interview with a supporter that if he had followed the liberal policies that he thought the media preferred, "Watergate would have been a blip." The media noted that most of the reporting turned out to be accurate and the competitive nature of the media guaranteed massive coverage of the political scandal. Applications to journalism schools reached an all-time high in 1974.
Howard Simons (June 3, 1929 - June 13, 1989) was the managing editor of the Washington Post at the time of the Watergate scandal, and later curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. According to his Washington Post obituary, Simons was a native of Albany, New York, and received a BA from Union College in Schenectady in 1951 and a master's degree a year later from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. After service in the Korean War, he became a science reporter in Washington for several news organizations, and joined The Post as a science writer in 1961. He became assistant managing editor in 1966 and managing editor in 1971. According to a site on the Howard Simons Fellowship, "Simons received the first phone call in The Post newsroom with word of the Watergate break-in and pressed relentlessly on the paper's coverage of the story. He started at The Post as a science reporter but soon became an editor, nurturing talented young reporters such as Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein." Simons is credited with dubbing their well-placed source "Deep Throat," in reference to the film of the same name. "When the time came, it was managing editor Howard Simons--not Ben Bradlee or other ranking editors--who made the crucial early decisions that led to the Washington Post's extraordinary coverage of the Watergate scandal, especially the decision to allow the metropolitan staff, which did not normally report on national politics, to pursue the story. "The Great Cover-Up" by Barry Sussman, page 66.  
The Yomagate was a political scandal that took place in Argentina in 1991, during the government of Carlos Menem. The same name combines the last name of the involved Amira Yoma, and the suffix "Gate" of habitual use in journalism after the Watergate scandal (USA., 1972-1974). 