Katharine Graham, 1917-2001
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Wednesday, July 18, 2001
We mark the death Tuesday of Katharine Meyer Graham, one of the most influential people in the world.
As the owner of The Washington
Post and Newsweek, to mention only
the flagships of the Graham media
empire, Kay Graham shaped the
news, deciding what would be
covered, how and when.
She shaped the view of the American
public and controlled the political and
media elites' understanding of their
role in her world. Curiously, for one
who built her own fortune at the head
of a media empire, she shunned media
examination of her own life, politics
and corporate decision-making.
Fame came to The Post for its role in
the Watergate scandal investigation
and its mysterious ``Deep Throat''
source, and the paper continued to
nose out embarrassing material to
undermine any conservative policy. In
the Clinton years, the paper stridently
defended the president.
Born in New York City, the daughter
of multimillionaire Eugene Meyer,
she grew up privileged. In keeping
with her father's fortune, she
graduated from Vassar College, where
she was involved with the leftist
trends of the day through the
American Student Union, then did
graduate work at the University of
Chicago and worked for a time as a
reporter in San Francisco with a
sympathetic view of Harry Bridges'
red dock workers.
She married Felix Frankfurter's
brilliant law clerk, Philip Graham,
who took over running The Post,
which her father purchased at a
bankruptcy sale. Graham built the
paper but became estranged from
Kay. She had him committed to a
mental hospital, and he was clearly
intending divorce when she signed
him out and took him for a weekend
outing during which he was found
shot. His death was ruled a suicide.
Within 48 hours, she declared herself
the publisher.
Kay Graham saw The Washington
Post as her inheritance from her
father. She cultivated presidents, their
wives and their senior advisers who,
whether Democrats or Republicans,
often heeded her subtle directives.
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