George and Teddy Kunhardt made the documentary “Becoming Katharine Graham” for the same reason most people make documentaries: to tell a story they thought people should know.
As publisher of the Washington Post and CEO of the Washington Post Co. Katharine Graham became the first woman to run a major media organization and a key player in the paper’s rise to prominence in the 1970s, first with its role in the publication of the Pentagon Papers and then with its famous investigation of the Watergate break-in.
But, as the Kunhardts wrote in their directors’ statement, her role in these and other cultural milestones has been too often overlooked. Reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward and executive editor Ben Bradlee became, and remain, household names. But in the revered 1976 film “All the President’s Men,” Graham never appears and is only mentioned via the infamous threat — “Katie Graham’s gonna get her tit caught in a big fat wringer if that’s published” — delivered by then-attorney general John Mitchell.
With this film, they hoped to set the record straight.
It does that, and quite a bit more. At a time when journalism is in crisis, both financially and existentially, “Becoming Katherine Graham,” which debuted on Prime Video last week, serves as a reminder of how important good management, and ownership, can be for any outlet. Yes, the film harks back to the predigital age of family-owned newspapers, which were often self-supporting and even profitable (though when Graham assumed her position, the Post was in large part supported by the company’s TV stations).
But her story makes it abundantly clear that the risks journalists must take in demanding truth of power are only possible when owners have their backs.
Last year’s presidential election exposed tensions between owners and newsrooms at several outlets (including this one), but most especially the venerable Post, where changes to the opinion section have led many to question the motivations of current owner Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon. In a recent dressing-down of Bezos in the Atlantic, former Post executive editor Martin Baron, once a fan, wrote: “Now we know Bezos is no Katharine Graham.”
Indeed, when “Becoming Katharine Graham” premiered at the Kennedy Center on Sunday, Bezos, chief executive Will Lewis and executive editor Matt Murray were notably absent. (Bezos was at the Oscars.)
During her tenure, Graham, who died in 2001, faced plenty of criticism, and more than a few direct threats, from both outside and inside her organization. Members of her board most certainly did not support publishing portions of the Pentagon Papers. In retribution for the paper’s Watergate coverage, then-President Nixon tried to destroy the Post by withholding the licenses of the company’s profitable TV stations. And during a violent 1975 pressman’s strike, seen in the opening of the film, workers burned Graham in effigy.
Having come of age during a time when it was common for publishers and editors to socialize with presidents and first ladies, Graham had personal relationships with many Washington power brokers, not to mention financial interests that could be affected by government approval. But, as she says in the film: “You can be friends with people in the government, but you remember, and they remember, that the paper comes first.”
A cri de coeur then, from beyond the grave.
More than most biodocs, “Becoming Katharine Graham” is guided by Graham’s voice from the many interviews and speeches she gave before her death in 1991 and from her memoir, “Personal History.” Though built out with the customary combination of contemporary interviews from those who knew her and archival footage — including chilling portions of the Nixon White House tapes — Graham essentially tells her own story, from her privileged youth — her father, financier Eugene Meyer, became chairman of the Federal Reserve — to her retirement and decision to write the memoir that informs much of the film.
She emerges as an accidental hero, a self-described “door-mat wife” who worked briefly at the Post after her father bought it in 1933 (at a bankruptcy auction) until assuming the duties of wife, mother and gracious society hostess. She was happy to see her husband, Phil Graham, named publisher in 1946. Two years later, Meyer transferred control over the company’s then privately owned stock to the couple, with Phil receiving 70% to Graham’s 30%.
After Phil’s death by suicide in 1963, Graham inherited both the company, which owned three television stations, two radio stations and Newsweek magazine, and the position of Washington Post publisher. Many thought she would sell the company, or relinquish the publisher position, but instead she dug in. Painfully shy and inevitably the only woman in any meeting, she learned by listening — it took her a year before she summoned the courage to ask a question in an editorial board meeting.
But summon it she did, despite being made very aware that, as she says, “A lot of men don’t like working for a woman.”
Bradlee, whom Graham hired from Newsweek to run the Post’s newsroom, was, mercifully, not one of them. “She was very quick to figure out who he was,” says Don Graham, who succeeded his mother as publisher and CEO (and later sold the Post to Bezos), “and he was very quick to figure out who she was.” Together Bradlee and Graham turned a small, local newsroom into a larger, hugely influential powerhouse.
An early portion of the documentary is framed around the inevitable gender stereotypes she faced, including those she had internalized. Graham had never dreamed of running a company she deeply associated with her father and her husband, nor had anyone expected her to. As the 20th century women’s movement began, she was already the head of a media company, and though she never identified as a feminist, she supported equal rights for women, which often put her at odds not only with the men around her but with her own position. When women at Newsweek, who were not allowed to advance beyond researcher, filed a discrimination suit in 1970, they gave Graham a heads up. Her response: “Which side am I supposed to be on?” (The women won their suit and the right to become writers, a significant victory for female journalists everywhere.)
In an anecdote that feels especially meaningful given the current tensions over editorials, Gloria Steinem remembers being asked to address an editorial board meeting because Graham wanted them “to support the Equal Rights Amendment editorially and they were not doing so. She felt she couldn’t order them to, so she asked me to come …”
A large chunk of the film deals with Graham’s courage during the Nixon administration. By agreeing to publish portions of the Pentagon Papers after a federal court had ordered the New York Times to stop, she risked criminal prosecution, the loss of the company’s television stations and potentially the whole enterprise, which had just gone public in an attempt to shore up financing. (After being ignored in “All the President’s Men,” her bravery is central to Steven Spielberg’s 2017 film “The Post.” )
The following year, she consistently supported her paper’s investigation into the Watergate break-in even when no other outlet followed the story; for months, that reporting caused many to question the Post’s intentions and Graham’s judgment. Famously vindictive, Nixon won reelection and his personal hatred of Graham, whom he called at one point “a miserable bitch,” drove his efforts to put the Post out of business. When he threatened to withhold the TV licenses of its stations, the company’s stock plummeted.
Enter journalism’s first billionaire savior, Warren Buffett, who bought a significant amount of low-priced nonvoting shares. As she says in the film, Graham had never met him, knew nothing about him and “worried that he wasn’t benevolent.” Many around her advised keeping him at a distance. Instead, Graham traveled to California to meet with Buffett (who, according to his daughter, ran out and bought swim trunks in order to burnish his Golden State mystique). The two hit it off (the trunks were not involved) and Buffett became her key financial advisor, as the paper’s finances teetered, and for long after.
As Bernstein and Woodward continued their investigation, threats and pressure from the Nixon White House increased. Graham began taking the reporters’ notes and research to her own home at night to keep them safe. In a contemporary interview, Bernstein remembers getting a call from the guard at the paper’s front desk alerting him to a subpoena that demanded his notes. He told Bradlee, who called Graham, returning to tell Bernstein, “‘They’re not your notes. Katharine says they’re her notes and if anyone is going to go to jail for withholding their notes … it’s going to be her.”
“You need nerve, you need to be able to withstand stuff,” says Courtland Milloy, former columnist and reporter for the Post. “Kay Graham set the standard, a high bar, for having nerve.”
That nerve paid off; a year of reporting finally cracked open Nixon’s involvement in the Watergate break-in, which was just one part of his reelection campaign’s use of political spying, sabotage and illegal funding. During the Watergate hearings, the existence of the White House tapes was revealed. When portions of the tapes made it clear that, among other things, he had been involved in covering up the break-in, he was threatened with impeachment. With virtually no public or political support, he became the first U.S. president ever to resign.
Graham found herself suddenly being touted as the most powerful woman in the country. But, she said, “I didn’t take any personal pleasure in this. We were pleased to have our reporting vindicated, but I don’t think that anybody … thought that the president of the United States having to resign because he would be impeached was a great event for the country.”
A year later, Graham faced another test. The Post’s pressmen went on strike, destroying the paper’s printing presses and staging a massive picket line in which one sign taunted her with her husband’s suicide: “Phil shot the wrong Graham.”
Graham’s first concern was getting the paper out. Plates were taken to the printing presses of nearby papers by helicopter. When the union refused to accept management’s final offer, she began to hire outside workers, in part, says her son, because she couldn’t imagine rehiring the people who destroyed the presses and set fire to the building.
“She empathized enormously with the families of the strikers,” says Buffett, “but with Kay, the newspaper totally came first, it was a sacred trust.”
Picketing continued, and extended to the world premiere of “All the President’s Men,” which was characterized as “the most eagerly awaited picture since ‘Jaws.’” Graham calls the strike, in which management eventually emerged victorious, the hardest thing she faced during her working life. “In many ways,” she said, “the strike broke my heart.”
Covered in the film almost entirely from management’s point of view, the strike was also the last big conflict Graham faced as a publisher. In 1979, Don took over, though Graham continued as CEO of the Washington Post Co. until 1991. She began working on her memoir, which came out in 1997 and won a Pulitzer Prize in 1998.
There are many reasons to watch “Becoming Katharine Graham.” As a woman, she was a trailblazer, a unique combination of privilege and humility, grace and grit, who overcame great personal trauma and natural reticence to help guide the country through political and cultural turmoil.
But at this moment, there’s an even more important message.
“The press in this country under a constitutional democracy is set up to be a critic of the government,” she says in the wake of Nixon’s resignation, “and it’s important that they do that, with a lot of responsibility.”
Many journalists, and the people who pay and manage them, will say the same. “Becoming Katharine Graham” provides the rare chance to see what it looks like when someone like Kay Graham repeatedly risks everything to do it.
