Nixon Scandal
White's Pulitzer-winning scoop almost didn't happen. Working off a tip and tax documents, White learned that Nixon failed to pay a large portion of his income taxes in 1970 and 1971. The night he was prepared to write the story, in September 1973, the union representing reporters at the newspaper voted to go on strike. White would later recall rolling the story out of his typewriter, folding it up and putting it in his wallet. He said he never thought about giving the story to management, even though he risked missing the story. "I was dreading the information I had was going to get out there. Every day I was checking out-of-town newspapers," he later told The Providence Journal. Twelve days later, the strike ended, and the story ran on October 3, 1973. At an Associated Press Managing Editors convention the following month, one of White's colleagues asked Nixon about the story, and Nixon replied, "People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I am not a crook." Nixon agreed to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes. The final total was $432,787.13 plus interest.
Read more about this topic: Jack White (reporter)
Famous quotes containing the words nixon and/or scandal:
“When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal.”
—Richard M. Nixon (1913–1992)
“Gossip isn’t scandal and it’s not merely malicious. It’s chatter about the human race by lovers of the same. Gossip is the tool of the poet, the shop-talk of the scientist, and the consolation of the housewife, wit, tycoon and intellectual. It begins in the nursery and ends when speech is past.”
—Phyllis McGinley (1905–1978)