A legendary news pioneer will be honored on a new stamp next year.
Katharine Meyer Graham spent nearly two decades of her life as the chairman of the board and chief executive officer of what was formerly known as Post-Newsweek Inc., and is now known as Graham Holdings and Graham Media Group, respectively.
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Well before the movie “The Post” hit movie theaters, which tells the story of her remarkable life, Katharine Graham was cementing her history.
We already know the story well. The Graham family still has ownership of Graham Media Group, which proudly runs TV stations across the country, perhaps, most notably, in Orlando, where WKMG-TV got its call letters from Katharine Meyer Graham herself. Other markets owned by Graham Media Group include Detroit (WDIV-TV), Houston (KPRC-TV), San Antonio (KSAT-TV), Jacksonville (WJXT-TV/WCWJ-TV) and Roanoke (WSLS-TV).
Katharine Meyer Graham faced many challenges, but rose above them, created a name for herself and, as many might say, forever changed history so that her influence still impacts our mission of journalistic integrity to this day.
Graham, who, in the early 1960s took over as president of the Washington Post Company, most famously made the difficult and infamous decision to publish the Pentagon Papers, which delved into the history of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
It caused the Post to face a threat of legal action, and it joined The New York Times as a co-defendant when the case went to the Supreme Court.
The decision was one that propelled the Post’s national profile after a court ruled in Graham’s favor, supporting the freedom of the press and stating that the publication of the Pentagon Papers posed no risk to government security.
Not only did Graham face and take head-on tough journalistic decisions -- ones that made a mark in the press world -- but she also taught us some important lessons in doing so.
Read more about Graham’s life here.
The postage stamp -- which will feature an oil portrait of Katharine, based on a photograph taken in the 1970s -- will be released in 2022.