> Could twitter and random blogs have stopped Vietnam and Nixon too, if they had existed back then?

Go read about Watergate and get back to me (though, ironically, to do that you would need to read the works of investigative journalists...).

Today, the equivalent to Deep Throat might be Snowden, and that, too, required journalists like those from The Guardian to get the story out. That kind of journalism requires resources to research, travel, for legal costs associated with protecting sources, etc.

Regarding Vietnam, the Pentagon Papers would never have been published if the Times hadn't spent their own money going to court to defend their right to publish them.

So no, I don't believe twitter or random blogs have the power of the fourth estate.

> And if there is something unique to journalists that make them more proficient at stopping presidents and wars, why couldn't they stop the Iraq war?

That's a deeply complicated topic.

First, it's worth noting journalists never stopped Vietnam from starting. But as the war was waged, journalism played a role in turning public opinion against the war after it had started, thus hastening its end.

So, with that said, journalists actually played a very similar role vis a vis the Iraq war.

Now, I do believe they were less effective than in the past, but I actually believe that's exactly on point, here: that period is the same time when journalism began to struggle in the face of the ascendance of the Internet.

Which brings me right back to my very original point: Quality journalism is dying because no one will pay for content. And no one will pay for content because of the perceived low quality of journalism. Repeat ad nauseum.

Your mistake is in believing quality journalism never existed, but that's only because of your limited perspective, having only seen the medium as it began its slow decline.