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Suppressed: Confessions of a Former New York Times Washington Correspondent
Suppressed
is the book the media would prefer you not read. The book may change the way you read a newspaper, listen to the radio, watch TV, or consume digital media.
Please look at the Follow the Author Page for videos by Robert M. Smith.
Incisive behind-the-scenes details about the Times and other media outlets. — Publishers Weekly
A forthright indictment of the media’s shortcomings. — Kirkus Reviews
Only 29% of Americans trust the media, and many Americans believe the media are to blame for the country’s division. The U.S. ranks dead last of all countries in media trust. But no one in the media is talking about this.
This well-reviewed book tells you why and shows you the inside of the media machine. It includes a look behind the scenes at some of the biggest stories in the history of journalism. The author — a former New York Times White House and investigative correspondent — was there and is ruthlessly honest about what he saw.
In fact, the author unearthed Watergate before Woodward and Bernstein, but saw the story ignored by the New York Times Washington Bureau when he gave it to them.
Margaret Sullivan, media critic for the Washington Post , called the book a “very engaging read.”
Smith is an attorney and barrister who has written a law book for lawyers. This is a different kind of book, but it is written with the same careful attention to the evidence.
Coming to the present, Suppressed shows how some media, including the New York Times, stepped into the ring and began slugging it out with President Trump, instead of staying outside the ring and neutrally reporting what it saw. The book argues that the media would have been more effective if it had remained neutral — and credible.
On the other hand, Times stock dropped 17 percent in the first two quarters of 2021, after President Trump left. During the same time the S&P 500 index rose 18 percent.
The book offers entertaining tidbits — some hard to believe — but also shows you how to be a knowledgeable consumer of something that you spend time on every day and depend on.
Written with candor and humor, Suppressed traces a young investigative reporter’s arc from naïveté to cynicism, from covering the White House to leaving journalism for Yale Law School and ultimately becoming a barrister in London and teaching at Oxford.
Please look at the Follow the Author Page for videos by Robert M. Smith.
Incisive behind-the-scenes details about the Times and other media outlets. — Publishers Weekly
A forthright indictment of the media’s shortcomings. — Kirkus Reviews
Only 29% of Americans trust the media, and many Americans believe the media are to blame for the country’s division. The U.S. ranks dead last of all countries in media trust. But no one in the media is talking about this.
This well-reviewed book tells you why and shows you the inside of the media machine. It includes a look behind the scenes at some of the biggest stories in the history of journalism. The author — a former New York Times White House and investigative correspondent — was there and is ruthlessly honest about what he saw.
In fact, the author unearthed Watergate before Woodward and Bernstein, but saw the story ignored by the New York Times Washington Bureau when he gave it to them.
Margaret Sullivan, media critic for the Washington Post , called the book a “very engaging read.”
Smith is an attorney and barrister who has written a law book for lawyers. This is a different kind of book, but it is written with the same careful attention to the evidence.
Coming to the present, Suppressed shows how some media, including the New York Times, stepped into the ring and began slugging it out with President Trump, instead of staying outside the ring and neutrally reporting what it saw. The book argues that the media would have been more effective if it had remained neutral — and credible.
On the other hand, Times stock dropped 17 percent in the first two quarters of 2021, after President Trump left. During the same time the S&P 500 index rose 18 percent.
The book offers entertaining tidbits — some hard to believe — but also shows you how to be a knowledgeable consumer of something that you spend time on every day and depend on.
Written with candor and humor, Suppressed traces a young investigative reporter’s arc from naïveté to cynicism, from covering the White House to leaving journalism for Yale Law School and ultimately becoming a barrister in London and teaching at Oxford.
- GenresMemoirJournalism
368 pages, Hardcover
Published May 14, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
February 9, 2026
A self-righteous, self-important, self-congratulatory, pointlessly contrarian, absurdly repetitive autohagiography.
The most annoying thing is that there are some really vital critiques of the media in here. But “Bob” can’t get out of his own way. He really needs us to know that he’s truly special, one of the good ones — one of the best ones, in fact — and that supersedes any other message.
He’s absurdly pleased with himself, and tries to disguise that reality with self-effacing humor that is thin camouflage indeed. One can only hear a grown man refer to himself as “naive” so many times before a gasket is blown.
He excoriates the Times over and over (and over) for failing to run with his “scoop” on Watergate. He essentially accuses Max Frankel, the Washington bureau chief from that era, of deprioritizing (and potentially quashing) his proposal to investigate a lead from the acting director of the FBI so that Frankel could maintain a chummy relationship with Henry Kissinger. Then he posits that the guy who leaked unsuccessfully to him probably delegated the leak job to Mark Felt who then went to the Post with the scoop and the rest is history. All of that is plausible, to be sure, and very interesting.
But he need not repeat himself so. And he does. Again. And again. And it’s not just vis a vis Watergate. Sometimes the most pedantic stories imaginable are repeated twice, three, four times. Compare this to Frankel’s autobiography, which, whatever his shortcomings, is written with the reader in mind. Less is more, Smith.
And what is left maddeningly unexplored is Smith’s own role in why Watergate wasn’t covered by the Times before the Post. The reason he gives for not engaging with the most important story in the history of journalism? For not pursuing the lead which would have made him the biggest name in the history of newspapermen? (Which, again, is a point he makes ad nauseam?) Well, he was leaving for Yale Law School the next day! He was tired of journalism! He handed the story off to an editor — just following the chain of command! God forbid you tell another reporter about it after you get ignored. God forbid you light a fire under someone’s ass. God forbid you push back attending law school, and have the Times pay for it, as they apparently offered to do?
I get it, you can’t change the past. When you’re done with something, you’re done with it, even if a great opportunity presents itself. But this book is so maddening to read because Smith talks as though you can change the past. He’s clearly desperate for a mea culpa from the Times … on a story from 1972. And important one, sure. But all the key players are dead.
And he’s so profoundly disappointed in the Times for fumbling the Watergate shit that right after he graduates Yale he … goes back to work for the Times.
If you want to live like that, own it. YOU sat Watergate out, Bob. Writing this book and blaming everyone but yourself will not save you from that fact. You are not actually Woodward & Bernstein’s peer, even if you feel as though you are. Maybe on other stories. Not that one.
Smith’s problem is he wants it both ways — he wanted the Times to have covered Watergate when he said so and for him to have gotten the credit, but he also didn’t want to do any of the legwork that such a massive story required. This sense of entitlement pervades the book, and I guess is befitting a Harvard man. You can take the kid out of Roxbury, but you can’t take the snobbery out of this one.
He’s probably a perfectly nice man, but comes off incredibly arrogant. One example - he brags about how he got people to leak to him in one line of work and then maintains, once he got into government, that he would NEVER consider leaking himself.
This is because Robert Smith did not pursue journalism because of any sort of coherent worldview. He did it not to hold power to account but to further the career of Robert Smith. Ditto for entering the legal profession. He only does anything for himself, and then he dumps on others for doing the same. Some Grand Mediator.
Spare yourself the time. Or do as I did and see if you can challenge yourself to finish this truly unremarkable book.
The most annoying thing is that there are some really vital critiques of the media in here. But “Bob” can’t get out of his own way. He really needs us to know that he’s truly special, one of the good ones — one of the best ones, in fact — and that supersedes any other message.
He’s absurdly pleased with himself, and tries to disguise that reality with self-effacing humor that is thin camouflage indeed. One can only hear a grown man refer to himself as “naive” so many times before a gasket is blown.
He excoriates the Times over and over (and over) for failing to run with his “scoop” on Watergate. He essentially accuses Max Frankel, the Washington bureau chief from that era, of deprioritizing (and potentially quashing) his proposal to investigate a lead from the acting director of the FBI so that Frankel could maintain a chummy relationship with Henry Kissinger. Then he posits that the guy who leaked unsuccessfully to him probably delegated the leak job to Mark Felt who then went to the Post with the scoop and the rest is history. All of that is plausible, to be sure, and very interesting.
But he need not repeat himself so. And he does. Again. And again. And it’s not just vis a vis Watergate. Sometimes the most pedantic stories imaginable are repeated twice, three, four times. Compare this to Frankel’s autobiography, which, whatever his shortcomings, is written with the reader in mind. Less is more, Smith.
And what is left maddeningly unexplored is Smith’s own role in why Watergate wasn’t covered by the Times before the Post. The reason he gives for not engaging with the most important story in the history of journalism? For not pursuing the lead which would have made him the biggest name in the history of newspapermen? (Which, again, is a point he makes ad nauseam?) Well, he was leaving for Yale Law School the next day! He was tired of journalism! He handed the story off to an editor — just following the chain of command! God forbid you tell another reporter about it after you get ignored. God forbid you light a fire under someone’s ass. God forbid you push back attending law school, and have the Times pay for it, as they apparently offered to do?
I get it, you can’t change the past. When you’re done with something, you’re done with it, even if a great opportunity presents itself. But this book is so maddening to read because Smith talks as though you can change the past. He’s clearly desperate for a mea culpa from the Times … on a story from 1972. And important one, sure. But all the key players are dead.
And he’s so profoundly disappointed in the Times for fumbling the Watergate shit that right after he graduates Yale he … goes back to work for the Times.
If you want to live like that, own it. YOU sat Watergate out, Bob. Writing this book and blaming everyone but yourself will not save you from that fact. You are not actually Woodward & Bernstein’s peer, even if you feel as though you are. Maybe on other stories. Not that one.
Smith’s problem is he wants it both ways — he wanted the Times to have covered Watergate when he said so and for him to have gotten the credit, but he also didn’t want to do any of the legwork that such a massive story required. This sense of entitlement pervades the book, and I guess is befitting a Harvard man. You can take the kid out of Roxbury, but you can’t take the snobbery out of this one.
He’s probably a perfectly nice man, but comes off incredibly arrogant. One example - he brags about how he got people to leak to him in one line of work and then maintains, once he got into government, that he would NEVER consider leaking himself.
This is because Robert Smith did not pursue journalism because of any sort of coherent worldview. He did it not to hold power to account but to further the career of Robert Smith. Ditto for entering the legal profession. He only does anything for himself, and then he dumps on others for doing the same. Some Grand Mediator.
Spare yourself the time. Or do as I did and see if you can challenge yourself to finish this truly unremarkable book.
February 5, 2022
I Listened to the unabridged 11-hour audio version of this title (read by Rick Adamson, Tantor Audio, 2021).
Most of us haven't heard of Bob Smith, first because he ended his career in investigative journalism more than four decades ago and second because he was pretty much absent from the Internet before the publication of this book. A Google search for journalist Bob Smith or Robert M. Smith returns very few hits before 2021.
Smith's memoir offers an insightful look behind the curtain of journalism: The intense competition for getting scoops; Working for peanuts, under impossible deadlines; The role of editors in promoting or demoting stories; Powerful behind-the-scenes figures who kill stories or make them appear on Page 1.
The book's title alludes to the fact that news suppression is alive and well in US media. Suppression occurs by authoritarian editors and by powerful individuals, who maintain cozy relationships with the press. Smith also discusses how bias in reporting and "advocacy journalism," unfortunately quite common nowadays, inflict pain on an already-divided country. Also harmful is "celebrity journalism," which has made journalists subjects of the news, rather than its conveyers.
Smith became disillusioned with journalism, leaving The Times for Yale Law School. The day before he left the paper, he told his editor about the Watergate cover-up, based on info he had received from FBI's Acting Director. Inexplicably, the editor did not use the leaked info and did not pass it on to his reporters, before he left on a long vacation a week later. What turned out to be the story of the century was thus inadvertently left to young, relentless Washington Post reporters to pursue.
After law school, Smith returned to journalism for a while, commanding a much higher salary and getting better assignments. Eventually, though, he decided to leave journalism to practice law in Europe and teach at Oxford. Smith mixes with his journalistic and legal stories anecdotes about his personal life, including his boyhood as the son of Eastern-European immigrants in a tough Boston neighborhood and education at elite institutions.
Virtually all important social and political events of the 1960s and 1970s are covered in the book. Besides Watergate, the stories discussed include the Bay of Pigs incident, the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, and various leaks of government documents. For many decades, ordinary people, politicians, business leaders, and other influential people have wanted to know what The Times thinks. Even though the paper benefited financially from stepping into the ring with Donald Trump, it lost its reverence by reacting to Trump's every tantrum and illogical statement.
This book may change your mind about the trustworthiness of The New York Times and its status as a beacon of truth. Descriptions of behind-the-scenes power plays and cozy relationships with certain politicians cast some doubt on the slogan "All the news that's fit to print." Do read The Times, if you want, but keep your eyes open for signs of manipulation and distortion.
This interview of the author with the US National Archives is interesting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dmfuh...
Most of us haven't heard of Bob Smith, first because he ended his career in investigative journalism more than four decades ago and second because he was pretty much absent from the Internet before the publication of this book. A Google search for journalist Bob Smith or Robert M. Smith returns very few hits before 2021.
Smith's memoir offers an insightful look behind the curtain of journalism: The intense competition for getting scoops; Working for peanuts, under impossible deadlines; The role of editors in promoting or demoting stories; Powerful behind-the-scenes figures who kill stories or make them appear on Page 1.
The book's title alludes to the fact that news suppression is alive and well in US media. Suppression occurs by authoritarian editors and by powerful individuals, who maintain cozy relationships with the press. Smith also discusses how bias in reporting and "advocacy journalism," unfortunately quite common nowadays, inflict pain on an already-divided country. Also harmful is "celebrity journalism," which has made journalists subjects of the news, rather than its conveyers.
Smith became disillusioned with journalism, leaving The Times for Yale Law School. The day before he left the paper, he told his editor about the Watergate cover-up, based on info he had received from FBI's Acting Director. Inexplicably, the editor did not use the leaked info and did not pass it on to his reporters, before he left on a long vacation a week later. What turned out to be the story of the century was thus inadvertently left to young, relentless Washington Post reporters to pursue.
After law school, Smith returned to journalism for a while, commanding a much higher salary and getting better assignments. Eventually, though, he decided to leave journalism to practice law in Europe and teach at Oxford. Smith mixes with his journalistic and legal stories anecdotes about his personal life, including his boyhood as the son of Eastern-European immigrants in a tough Boston neighborhood and education at elite institutions.
Virtually all important social and political events of the 1960s and 1970s are covered in the book. Besides Watergate, the stories discussed include the Bay of Pigs incident, the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, and various leaks of government documents. For many decades, ordinary people, politicians, business leaders, and other influential people have wanted to know what The Times thinks. Even though the paper benefited financially from stepping into the ring with Donald Trump, it lost its reverence by reacting to Trump's every tantrum and illogical statement.
This book may change your mind about the trustworthiness of The New York Times and its status as a beacon of truth. Descriptions of behind-the-scenes power plays and cozy relationships with certain politicians cast some doubt on the slogan "All the news that's fit to print." Do read The Times, if you want, but keep your eyes open for signs of manipulation and distortion.
This interview of the author with the US National Archives is interesting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dmfuh...
February 8, 2024
What a kaleidoscope life! His paternal grandfather, an Eastern European Jew, adopted the surname Smith when he immigrated to the U.S., settling the the hard-scrabble Roxbury District of Boston. Author recounts his education: Boston Latin School, Harvard, Columbia University's journalism Graduate School, his early working life: New York Times reporter, Boston Herald reporter, New York Times Washington correspondent; then leaving a journalistic career for the Yale Law School. Many reflections and observations along the way: “Want a friend in Washington? Get a dog.” (Harry Truman). This book in many ways affirms that observation. He writes about the quirks of Times editors during his time (1960s) there, many contrary to the goal of journalistic objectivity. About how The Times, mainly through its imperious self-identity, let the Watergate “scoop” slip through its fingers. As a lawyer he specialized in mediation and arbitrates his journalistic experience to leading him to become an unconventional one, and, yes, he avers, with great success. Book's text has a journalistic flair, which I love.
May 27, 2021
Robert M. Smith (the Author) was a reporter for the New York Times in the 1960's and early 70's. In this book he covers his various exploits while working there along with an inside look of why a paper or editor will print, not print or manipulate a story in the paper all under the guise to keep favor with confidential sources and why this is a sham when they should just report unbiased news just the news. I had concerns with how factual this book would be as you really cannot find much about this author on the internet. The articles in 2009 and 2014 talk about Mr. Smith's claim that he was the first to break the Watergate story. There are only two people that really no if this is indeed fact. The author does make sure to cover the articles mentioned on the internet in his book and I will give him props for that. Whether you believe the author or not he makes some compelling arguments and does a good job putting this book together.
June 19, 2021
EXCELLENT READ. Learn how government and press frequently work together to make more money and stay in power by suppressing the truth.
September 7, 2021
An engaging memoir that also details several of the NYT’s missteps in the last 50 years from burying their scoop on Watergate to the more recent trend away from reporting to ‘advocacy.
September 14, 2021
Exquisite writing.
February 9, 2022
What a Life! Columbia J School, NY Times Wash DC, then Yale Law School to Carter's Admin, DA in SF, then wrap with playing mediator.
June 7, 2022
It was OK
May 8, 2025
Skimmed. Says what I’ve known. The media lost its soul in the early 2000s.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews