Sydney H. Schanberg: Bob Woodward's Own Scandal
. . . a media marketplace that long ago concluded having access to power is more important than speaking truth to it. —Newsweek's Christopher Dickey, October 2005 essay
Bob Woodward rightly became a beacon in the journalism world for the groundbreaking shoe-leather reporting he and Carl Bernstein did on the Watergate scandal in 1972 for The Washington Post. Since then he has become known for his books gleaned from rarely given interviews with presidents and other powerful people in Washington's high places. He appears often on television talk shows, giving inside looks at major stories as well as orotund comments on the practice of good journalism.
On October 27, Woodward appeared on CNN's Larry King Live and pronounced that the current Plamegate scandal in the White House was really much ado about nothing.
Here are some of his words: "First of all, this began not as somebody launching a smear campaign. . . . When the story comes out, I'm quite confident we're going to find out that it started kind of as gossip, as chatter, and that somebody learned that Joe Wilson's wife had worked at the CIA and helped him get this job going to Niger to see if there was an Iraq-Niger uranium deal.
"And there's a lot of innocent actions in all of this. . . . Well, this is a junkyard dog prosecutor and he goes everywhere and asks every question and turns over rocks, and rocks under rocks, and so forth. . . . I think it's quite possible, though probably unlikely, that he will say, you know, there was no malice or criminal intent at the start of this. Some people kind of had convenient memories before the grand jury.
"Technically they might be able to be charged with perjury. But I don't see an underlying crime here, and the absence of the underlying crime may cause somebody who is a really thoughtful prosecutor to say, you know maybe this is not one to go to the court with."
Is this the same Bob Woodward whose Watergate scoops were dismissed by Richard Nixon's press secretary, the late Ron Ziegler, as piddling stories about a "third-rate burglary"? Doesn't Woodward remember the reaction by many in the White House press corps, who initially sneered at the story and brushed it off as the fevered product of two lowly cityside reporters covering crime and the courts—which is what Woodward and Bernstein were at the time?
I wish I were wrong, but to me Woodward sounds as if he has come a long way from those shoe-leather days—and maybe on a path that does not become him. He sounds, I think, like those detractors in 1972, as they pooh-poohed the scandal that unraveled the Nixon presidency— the scandal that Woodward and Bernstein doggedly uncovered. ...
Read entire article at Village Voice
Bob Woodward rightly became a beacon in the journalism world for the groundbreaking shoe-leather reporting he and Carl Bernstein did on the Watergate scandal in 1972 for The Washington Post. Since then he has become known for his books gleaned from rarely given interviews with presidents and other powerful people in Washington's high places. He appears often on television talk shows, giving inside looks at major stories as well as orotund comments on the practice of good journalism.
On October 27, Woodward appeared on CNN's Larry King Live and pronounced that the current Plamegate scandal in the White House was really much ado about nothing.
Here are some of his words: "First of all, this began not as somebody launching a smear campaign. . . . When the story comes out, I'm quite confident we're going to find out that it started kind of as gossip, as chatter, and that somebody learned that Joe Wilson's wife had worked at the CIA and helped him get this job going to Niger to see if there was an Iraq-Niger uranium deal.
"And there's a lot of innocent actions in all of this. . . . Well, this is a junkyard dog prosecutor and he goes everywhere and asks every question and turns over rocks, and rocks under rocks, and so forth. . . . I think it's quite possible, though probably unlikely, that he will say, you know, there was no malice or criminal intent at the start of this. Some people kind of had convenient memories before the grand jury.
"Technically they might be able to be charged with perjury. But I don't see an underlying crime here, and the absence of the underlying crime may cause somebody who is a really thoughtful prosecutor to say, you know maybe this is not one to go to the court with."
Is this the same Bob Woodward whose Watergate scoops were dismissed by Richard Nixon's press secretary, the late Ron Ziegler, as piddling stories about a "third-rate burglary"? Doesn't Woodward remember the reaction by many in the White House press corps, who initially sneered at the story and brushed it off as the fevered product of two lowly cityside reporters covering crime and the courts—which is what Woodward and Bernstein were at the time?
I wish I were wrong, but to me Woodward sounds as if he has come a long way from those shoe-leather days—and maybe on a path that does not become him. He sounds, I think, like those detractors in 1972, as they pooh-poohed the scandal that unraveled the Nixon presidency— the scandal that Woodward and Bernstein doggedly uncovered. ...