realcarlbernstein

A great film. In these 45 years, perhaps the greatest problem in news coverage has become the laziness of too many "reporters" and news organizations. Good reporting requires perseverance, multiple sources of information, recognizing that a reporter or editor's preconceived notion of what the story might be almost always turns out to be wrong (example: my belief in the first couple of days after the Watergate break in that the CIA was behind it, not the Nixon White House. We went where the facts and our methodology took us.) So, I'd say that most of our newsrooms are afflicted by the failure of reporters to get out of the office and bang on sources' doors, especially at their homes/not their office where they are subject to pressure; relying on Google and the internet as primary source material, instead of being the great tools (rather than primary human sources) to enhance the real reporting task. Also, reporters– more so than at the time of "Network"– often tend to be lousy listeners and think they've got the story when they have a good quote or a piece of information that might manufacture controversy rather than continue reporting to further develop the real story. I'm not engaging in nostalgia here. What I'm describing is demonstrable and out there for all to see.

All good reporting, whether on the White House, sports, City Hall, etc., is the same thing: the best obtainable version of the truth, to use a phrase that Bob Woodward and I have often employed, and which has its origins back at the Washington Star where I did my apprenticeship from age 16-21 and is the subject of "Chasing History: A Kid In The Newsroom." I not only got the best seat in the country at age 16, I learned from the greatest reporters and editors of their day, who above all embraced the notion of the best obtainable version of the truth in all its complexity and requirement of perpetual engagement, watching, looking, questioning, going anywhere, listening hard, push and pushing some more (to quote Bob.)

Answer: See my answer to u/meeekus. But an equal or even greater problem, perhaps, than indicated by your question is the disinterest of so many citizens and lack of openness to the truth. Instead, news and information is consumed increasingly (by most people?) to reinforce what they already believe, their politics and prejudices and ideologies.

Yes, the truth is not neutral. On MLK's birthday, let's think about the march on Washington in 1963. Should we have given 50% of our news story that day to the small number of counter-demonstrators and their rhetoric? Happily, there has been less and less of "both sides-ism" in major news media over the past half century. Look at the great reporting by the White House Press Corps on Donald Trump's presidency as Exhibit A.

Read my book. I've been waiting through this whole AMA to say that 😉

Though Chasing History: A Kid In The Newsroom is a memoir of my apprenticeship from age 16-25 and a picture of journalism & the country at a pivotal moment in our history (1960-65: the Kennedy era, the Civil Rights movement, the war in Vietnam, criminals/cons/conspiracies and American bedlam), it is also very much about the reporter's trade with resonance to today that should need no direct narrative linkage. It's that obvious.

I'm going to use your question as an opportunity to say something about this AMA which disturbs me: The number of questions that seem to be built on the premise that what ails our journalism today is that it does not bring about the desired political goals and results that the questioner wants to see. I don't see journalism that way. Rather, I see it as the best obtainable version of the truth that provides plenty of information for informed consumers of news to make intelligent and worthwhile decisions and form thoughtful opinions about many things including politics. Good reporting is not there to serve any ideology.

Answer: Even his misuse of the intelligence community was only a part of the story and Nixon's criminal and unconstitutional conduct. Not to mention the myth "the coverup was worse than the crime." In fact, as we noted in an afterward to the 40th Anniversary Edition of All The President's Men, "long before the Watergate break in, gumshoeing, burglary, wire-tapping, and political sabotage had become a way of life in the Nixon White House. What was Watergate? It was Nixon's 5 wars." Four of them were waged with illegal conduct.

1. The war against the antiwar movement. 2. The war on the news media. 3. The war on the Democrats and the free electoral system itself. 4. The war on the justice system. 5. The war on history, in which Nixon and some of his former aides and acolytes tried to play down the significance of Watergate and present it as a blip on the President's record.