via Buzzmachine

In her column yesterday, Maureen Dowd said that even Nixon didn't do what Bush is doing with fake news:

Even the Nixon White House didn't do anything this creepy. It's worse than hating the press. It's an attempt to reinvent it.

Ah, well, actually, Nixon did it, too... I have a story to tell I don't think I've told here before...

When I finished my freshman year at Claremont in California and before transferring to Northwestern to go into journalism, I was told that someone was hiring young reporters to cover the presidential campaign. Spending the summer in California covering an election -- who could pass that up? So I went on the interview.

It turned out that it was the Committee to ReElect the President, aka CREEP, that was trying to hire young "reporters" carrying credentials for a made-up news agency to get press access to all of the other side's campaign appearances; they were to record the speeches and events and report back to the Nixon campaign.

Of course, I said no.