Watergate 50 years: Woodward and Bernstein see lessons for journalists today

When Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein published their bombastic report on Watergate that led to the resignation of former US President Richard Nixon in 1974, the pair thought he would be the last president to openly challenge the US Constitution and the law. .

“And then, as we say, came Trump,” Woodward said on the show. “Reliable Sources”, gives CNN, on day 5.

To mark the 50th anniversary of the Watergate break-in, for which the then-young Woodward and Bernstein published a series of investigative stories in The Washington Post, journalists wrote a new foreword to their book All the President’s Men. President”).

“If you want a description of what brought down Nixon and the Nixon presidency, it’s this hatred and venom that was present in his administration,” Woodward said. “And we now see [isso] in our policy.”

Woodward recalled the interview he did with former President Donald Trump shortly before the 2020 election, as Trump watched a recording of his recent State of the Union address.

“He said, ‘See the hate, see the hate,’ while people were just sitting there listening,” Woodward remembered Trump saying. “Hate is something we need to get rid of as individuals and as a political system.”

Bernstein said the level of crime in the White House during the Trump administration may have exceeded that of Nixon. And, 50 years later, he never thought he would be reporting on another president who abused his office so much.

“Trump will be America’s first insurgent president, not just a criminal president like Nixon,” Bernstein said.

Bernstein saw other similarities between the two former presidents. “Both crimes began by undermining the most basic element of democracy,” Bernstein said: “free and fair elections.”

Advice for today’s journalists

When Nixon resigned in 1974, the pair of reporters received a personal note from their Washington Post editor Katherine Graham.

“Don’t start thinking too highly of yourselves. You guys made some of the really good stories. But I want to give you some advice,” Woodward quoted the ex-boss’s note.

“Beware of demonic pomposity,” Graham wrote, and five decades later, Woodward said that’s advice journalists today should still heed.

Bernstein added that today’s reporters should adhere to a simple phrase that he and Woodward have relied on in the course of their investigation, which is to find “the best possible version of the truth.”

“That involves perseverance,” Bernstein said. “Being a good listener is the most important decision reporters and editors have to make: what is news?”