No more 'Deep Throats' now

The culture of investigative journalism, which W. Mark Felt helped to glamorise, seems to have expired long before the man, better known as "Deep Throat", died on Thursday.

Felt's words and secret information, printed by two stubborn reporters - Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, and published by the Washington Post despite all odds - helped topple president Richard Nixon in 1974 over what became to be known as the Watergate scandal. He was the unanimous source who fed the reporters information that revealed Nixon's abuse of his presidential powers.

Deep Throat has been an inspiration to a generation of journalists who wanted to be another Woodward. But looking at the state of American journalism three decades after Watergate, we see a press that has abandoned its aggressive investigative attitude in favour of public relations articles, highlighted by the bizarre coverage of the Iraq war when most of the US media, "embedded" with the military, played along the Bush war-game.

Of course the big players, notably the New York Times, apologised later. But it was too late. And Bush is still around, isn't he?