America’s most famous reporters — Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein — visited Atlanta last week, delivering a joint speech at Emory University.
Invited as part of an annual lecture series, the two Watergate reporters retold their famous story, chronicled in the film “All the President’s Men,” to an evening audience.
But the more interesting part was an afternoon session with a group of bright Emory journalism students who spent about 45 minutes with the “old geezers,” as Woodward referred to himself and Bernstein.
The pair answered questions, told stories and joked with the students — never lecturing them — making their points instead and urging the students onward.
The duo’s story goes like this:
Two young reporters for The Washington Post find themselves covering an odd burglary at an office complex named the Watergate. Through weeks and months of old-fashioned reporting — and facing immense external and internal pressure at the Post — the pair over time connects the burglary to President Richard Nixon’s re-election campaign.
Eventually, the plot and a cover-up come to light, and the president resigns. The energy and enthusiasm these famous journalists displayed in their session with the students revealed a pair still passionate about their work, its place in history and American journalism.
Among the highlights of their discussion:
After about eight weeks into the reporting on Watergate, the two said they had a conversation they kept to themselves until later and purposefully left out of the book they wrote about the scandal.
While taking a coffee break one day at the newspaper, Bernstein turned to Woodward and said the president was going to be impeached. He called it a point where “intuition meets information,” and said it gave him a chill.
They never brought it up again while they were reporting the story because they feared people inside and outside the newspaper would think impeachment was their agenda.
Woodward also told the students he has a saying: “You see truth at night and lies during the day.” He told the students that most of the key reporting on Watergate was done at night, through unofficial channels. He and Bernstein urged the students to expect to work hard, and to work long hours.
Woodward said the “truth is hidden,” and it’s up to journalists to find it. That’s what the public expects, and it was a theme both kept coming back to.
They described the intense pressure they felt reporting the story, and acknowledge the courage displayed by Post Editor Ben Bradlee and Publisher Katharine Graham.
“The pressure was not to make a mistake,” said Bernstein.
The pair recounted for students the attacks by the Nixon White House on them and the newspaper. But they didn’t give up because the president’s staff issued “non-denial denials,” rather than actually attacking the facts of the story.
Woodward and Bernstein explained that the technique of politicians and others in attacking the media — rather than addressing the facts at hand — is common. It was a standard in the Nixon White House and remains a problem today.
They reserved their strongest words for a discussion about the Internet as a news source — and Google in particular.
In both sessions, the pair asked what people thought “drives” the Internet.
After patiently hearing a number of suggestions (“social media,” “gossip,” “commerce”), Woodward noted that “impatience” might be the right word. And he noted that no one suggested the “truth.”
In the rush toward instant news, Woodward told the students, the truth has become “dispensable.”
He said he’s spent time with Google and its leaders, and sees their approach as a problem with our current news reporting and consumption culture.
He noted a lack of institutional commitment beyond making money, unlike the Post’s and other newspapers commitment to holding government accountable.
Google, Woodward said, simply aggregates news reported by others, offering little true judgment or commitment to its importance.
“The high purpose of journalism has been hijacked,” he said. Both men urged the young journalists to push for high standards and ideals.
Set out, Bernstein told them, to find “the best obtainable version of the truth.”
That remains sound advice.
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