Midterm Blog Post — All the President’s Men

Through reading through The Investigative Reporter’s Handbook and watching the movie “All the President’s Men” about the journalists who uncovered the Watergate scandal, I have learned to appreciate the true art that is investigative journalism.

Investigative journalism requires a persistent and motivated individual who does not easily shy away from pursuing truth and keeps going even when the story seems to hit a dead end.

Overall, Woodward and Bernstein stuck very closely to the Paul Williams Way of investigative reporting. In the Paul Williams Way, there is a 11-step process that helps investigative reporters make sure they have a solid story that will make the impact they are trying to make.

The steps of the Paul Williams Way are conception, feasibility study, go/no-go decision, base building, planning, original research, re-evaluation, filling the gaps, final evaluation, writing and re-writing and publications or airing of the story with potential follow up stories.

It is important to follow these steps because they help ensure that the story is worth pursuing and that is solid on all fronts. To do all the work to write an in-depth piece just to find out it was a sham would be discouraging and a huge waste of time.

Another important aspect of investigative reporting is considering your sources. Both primary and secondary sources are vital to making sure the story will be thorough and successful.

Secondary sources that include newspaper stories, announcements, police reports, ads, broadcast sources, magazines, newsletters, etc. Basically anything that can be found online can be considered secondary sources.

These sources help the reporter find information that pertains to their story that they might not be able to obtain otherwise. With a little work and creativity, the journalist can use records to their advantage to help verify information in the story and fill in the gaps of the story.

While secondary sources can add a lot to the story, it won’t have the correct impact without primary sources. Primary sources include public records that have to do with the people they’re researching. Examples of primary sources are property records, loans, licenses, voter registration, medial records, marriage licenses, divorces, etc.

These records can help the investigator determine the subject’s habits, potential scandals or anything else that might pertain to the story. Woodward and Bernstein went through many records to determine where the money was going, where it could be coming from and who was involved. It was through figuring out who knew who that they were able to determine who was part of the Watergate scandal.

Whistleblowers were key to Woodward and Bernstein’s story of who was behind Watergate. Without people like Sloan and Deep Throat who were willing to talk to the reporters and give hints on who was behind the scandal, the journalists would have reached an end to their story. While they could figure out what was going on for the most part on their own, they needed people to verify that what they were printing was true.

When it came to investigating the executive branch, Woodward and Bernstein had to go a few different routes since they couldn’t just call up the White House. They talked to people who worked at the White House library, talked to aides and former aides and anyone who they could connect to the White House.

Ethics are a very important aspect of investigative journalism. How far do you go for a story? Do you publish a story that will destroy someone’s life if it is in the public’s best interest? These are questions journalists must ask themselves when starting an investigative story.

Woodward and Bernstein, in my opinion, did a really good job with ethical considerations when it came to their Watergate story. They did not publish the names of sources who wished to remain anonymous in order to protect them and went through all of the right channels to talk to sources instead of surprising them or sneaking around.

The incident was important because Woodward and Bernstein brought to light a scandal that involved the most important man in the country along with the entire intelligence community. Something that would have continued to fly under the radar for who knows how long was exposed because of their hard work.

It was a landmark for investigative journalism because it showed the important role the media plays in holding those in power accountable and the importance of asking hard questions.

It wasn’t always easy, the paper and the reporters faced many obstacles during the story process. They faced ridicule from other outlets and the White House and threats among other things. They researched the story through records, archives and through interviewing people.

Had the story been done today, the men would have been able to utilize social media and other sources like Google to help find information for their story.

To keep the story going, Woodward called people, talked in person to sources, met with his whistleblower source Deep Throat, looked through records, considered other angles and asked for perspectives from his editor and from Bernstein.

In the 2012 article Woodward and Bernstein wrote about their involvement in uncovering the Watergate scandal, and one source that stood out in particular was Bob Haldeman, who was Nixon’s chief-of-staff at the time. Haldeman had a huge role in what happened at Watergate, so his quotes in the story were very interesting.

The relationship between a reporter and his editor cannot not be overlooked. There has to be mutual respect and trust for it to work. If an editor doesn’t trust his writer, they won’t be able to publish a story that has real impact. The trust that the Washington Post editor showed Bernstein and Woodward ultimately led to the truth about Watergate coming out.

Watching this movie gave me a greater respect for the work that journalists, particularly investigative journalists do on a daily basis. First, I learned the importance of sticking with a story and persevering even when the story seems to hit a dead end. Trust your gut — if you think there’s more to the story there probably is.

Second, this movie showed me how important it is for journalists to ask the hard questions, even when it feels out of place or even uncomfortable. You never know what could come out of it.

Aside from Woodward and Bernstein, two characters who played an important role in the story were Ben Bradlee and Deep Throat. The story never would have gone through without the support of Bradlee, and the men wouldn’t have realized the depth of what they were dealing with without Deep Throat.

If I could ask the duo anything, I would ask them how they continued to push through after so much push back and what seemed to be dead ends, and I would ask how they felt when the whole story finally broke and they could see their hard work pay off.