Woodward and Bernstein: The Washington Post
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were best known for breaking the 1970s Watergate scandal, which led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon.
Growing up with Bob Woodward:
Bob Woodward was born to Jane and Alfred Woodard in Geneva, Illinois on March 26, 194. He attended Yale University in 1961 with an NROTC scholarship where he studied history and English literature. In 1965 he received his B.A. degree and then went on to begin a five-year tour of duty in the U.S. Navy. In August 1970 he was detached as a lieutenant. After being discharged he considered attending law school but instead decided to apply for a job as a reporter for The Washington Post. He was given a two-week trial by the Post’s metropolitan editor Harry M. Rosenfield; however, it didn't go as expected and he failed. He trained and worked with the Montgomery Sentinel, a weekly in the Washington D.C. suburbs for about a year. After this work, Woodward was hired as a Post reporter in September 1971.
Growing up with Carl Bernstein:
Carl Bernstein was born in Washington D.C. on February 14, 1944. Growing up at the age of 16 he worked at the Washington Star newspaper as a copy boy. Once old enough he enrolled at the University of Maryland where he studied journalism. However, his academic career was short-lived and he dropped out to pursue a full-time journalism career with the Star. Unfortunately, in a catch-22, Bernstein wasn't able to become a journalist as planned without a bachelor's degree. Bernstein had no desire to re-enroll in college which really made his journalistic career harder to pursue. Bernstein kept in touch with the city editor at the Star and after a few years, he followed him to the Daily Journal in Elizabethtown, New Jersey. While he was there he was able to make an impact right away. Soon enough Bernstein won an award from the New Jersey Press Association for stories he had written on the blackout in 1965 and the problems of teenage drinking. In 1966 Bernstein joined the Washington Post as part of their metro staff which soon led to him gaining the Post more attention than anyone could ever even imagined.
The Watergate Story: Their biggest breakthrough story
This story broke the 1970s Watergate scandal which eventually led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. Bernstein was teamed up with his colleague Bob Woodward to dive into the Watergate story and put all the pieces together. During the summer of 1972, a group of men were arrested for vandalizing the Watergate building, which was a Washington, D.C. apartment complex. They were removing wire-tapping devices that they had previously installed to facilitate eavesdropping on the chairman of the Democratic National Committee. The phone number of E. Howard Hunt, a member of President Richard Nixon’s Special Investigations Group was discovered in one of the burglars' address books which quickly led reporters to determine the connection between the White House itself and the burglars. Bernstein and Woodward were able to find a connection with the White House and someone who went by the name of “Deep Throat”. With this information, Woodward and Bernstein learned that Nixon aides had paid the burglars in an attempt to gather incriminating secrets about Nixon's political rivals. They also found out that the wiretaps the burglar had been caught removing were installed in the Democratic Party campaign offices. They discovered that Nixon’s aides had arranged for the burglars to receive “hundreds of thousands of dollars in hush money.” A year later, Nixon himself was accused of being involved in the plot, and over 40 people went to jail because of the Watergate investigations. This included Nixon's top White House aides H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman. As well as Nixon’s many attorneys, former Attorney General John N. Mitchell, White House Counsel John W. Dean, and Herbert Kalmbach, Nixon’s personal attorney. The Senate report pursues and supports a lot of the reporting done by Bernstein and Woodward on the Watergate break-in, cover-up, Nixon White House, and 1972 re-election campaign espionage, sabotage, and fundraising.
On August 9, 1974, Nixon became the first president of the United States to resign from his office due to the overwhelming evidence and pressure. Bernstein and Woodward, alongside the Washington Post, were greatly credited for taking down the administration. The Watergate story was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Journalism in 1973. The Pulitzer Prize is one of the most prestigious awards journalists can get and are a huge honor when awarded. The Watergate story left an uprising impact on The Washington Post, the public, and formal President Nixon. “The most obvious impact of Watergate on the media was to establish The Washington Post as a significant rival to The New York Times in national political reporting. This has lastingly, altered the map of political journalism,” Professor Michelal Shudson one of the leading academic historians of Watergate wrote. Hudson said it led to “the renewal, reinvigoration and remythologization of muckraking… between Lincoln Steffens, Ida Tarbell, and Ray Stannard Baker in 1904, and Woodward and Bernstein in 1972 and 1973, it had no culturally resonant, heroic exemplars. But Woodward and Bernstein did not simply renew, they extended the power of the muckraking image.” This whole story left a huge impact and realization for many as well also embraced the power muckrakers had.
Books and Films:
During the Watergate scandal, Bernstein and Woodward wrote two books. All the President’s Men (1974) and The Final Days (1976). The All the Presidents Men book was about the Watergate scandal that brought down the presidency of Richard Nixon. Their other book The Final Days was about the dramatic last months of Richard Nixon as president. Their first book together All the Presidents Men (1974) became a #1 national bestseller by spring and summer before Nixon had resigned in 1974. The book All the President’s Men was actually made into a hit Hollywood movie that starred Robert Redford as Woodward and Dustin Hoffman as Berstein in 1976. This movie was a classic and won four Academy Awards. The second Woodward-Berstein book on Nixon, The Final Days was then released in April 1976 just as their All the Presidents Men was premiering in theatres for the first time. All of this drama and new information being realized led to many other news outlets broadcasting the Nixon scandal. Newsweek published excerpts in a cover story with three pictures of Nixon sweating, bewildered and despondent. Claiming it to be, “the epic political story of our time.”
Richard Nixons Response:
Nixon was ordered to turn in tapes from the Oval Office to the Supreme Court which eventually provided concrete evidence of his involvement and later attempts to cover up his association with the crime. Nixon had spent more than $1 million defending himself in multiple lawsuits relating to the Watergate scandal and owed back taxes to the federal government. He had to find ways to reestablish his financial well-being. 69 government officials were charged and 48 were found guilty and in 1974 Nixon was forced to resign. Nixon himself had many harsh words to say for Woodward and Berstein during the famous David Frost revealed interviews back in 1977. Not only would he not use their names but he would refer to them as “the famous series by some unnamed correspondents” from The Washington Post. A year before their book The Final Days was published Pat Nixon, Richard Nixon's wife, had had a stroke. During the Frost interviews, Nixon chastised the two reporters for writing about his wide's “alleged weakness.” Claiming “They haven't helped,” Nixon told Frost and said “Those who write history as fiction on third-hand knowledge, I have nothing but utter contempt. And I will never forgive them. Never!” David Frost was the interviewer to got Nixon to apologize for the Watergate Scandal.
In 1977, three years after Nixon was driven from office by the Watergate scandal Frost was able to persuade him to end a self-imposed silence and extract an apology to the American people. Frost pressed Nixon to acknowledge the mistakes of the Watergate period. “Unless you say it, you're going to be haunted for the rest of your life,” Frost imposed to Nixon. Through Frost’s strong words and compassion Nixon apologized for putting “the American people through trow years of needless agony,” adding, “I let the people drown and I have to carry that burden with me for the rest of my life,” Nixon stated.
Where are They now?
Bob Woodward:
Woodward continued to work at the Post and was named the assistant managing editor in 1979. In the following years, he became better known for his books rather than his newspaper reporting. His later material focused on hard news and the power and politics of Washington. In 2002 Woodward led a team that earned another Pulitzer prize for the paper's coverage of the repercussions of the September 11 attacks in the United States in 2001. He then released the first in a series of books that offered an inside on the administration of President George W. Bush. Today he is still continuing to write stories and focus on politics and write stories on the different administrations and presidents. Today, Woodward holds the title of associate editor of The Washington Post
Carl Bernstein:
At the end of 1976, Bernstein left the Washington Post and went to work as an investigative reporter for ABC. While working with ABC he wrote about international intrigue while also contributing to such magazines as Time, New Republic, the New York Times, and Rolling Stone. He proceeded to write numerous books including His Holiness: John Paul II and The Hidden History of Our Time (1996) and A Women in Charge (2007), a biography of Hillary Rodham Clinton. Today, Bernstein is still reporting on political events and working on several multi-media projects.
