HBO’s documentary The Newspaperman covers a time in the 70s when the president was disdainful of factually accurate journalism – eerily similar to now

A new HBO documentary plays tapes of the president telling his press secretary not to let any Washington Post reporters into the White House from now on, saying: “That’s a total order and, if necessary, I will fire you.”

He goes on to call the newspaper’s editor “a mean bastard”, while the press secretary decries its latest articles as “shoddy journalism”.

Related: Spielberg’s The Post tells of Pentagon Papers and time when media was trusted

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