Watergate and “Woodstein”

When the offices of the Democratic National Committee were broken into on June 17, 1972, two young reporters from The Washington Post were assigned to the story. Their initial reporting about the people arrested at the scene of the crime led them into a deep, complex investigation that revealed a scandal involving numerous government officials, including those at the highest levels of power – up to, and including, the president himself. The reporters’ persistent digging, countless interviews and long series of reports helped bring to light evidence of officials’ abuses of power and criminal actions. Just over two years after Woodward and Bernstein’s first news story about the burglary, President Richard M. Nixon resigned from office.

They were opposites in personality and didn’t particularly like each other when they teamed up to work on Watergate reporting. Yet this “perfect journalistic odd couple”* became such close newsroom partners they became known as “Woodstein.”

Bob Woodward – Born in Geneva, Illinois in 1943, Woodward spent five years as an officer in the U.S. Navy after graduating from Yale University. His first reporting job was with the Montgomery Sentinel, a small newspaper in Maryland, and after a year he was hired by The Washington Post in 1971. Nine months later, he began reporting on what would become one of the most famous stories in journalism, the Watergate scandal. He continues to work at the Post as an associate editor and has written or co-written 16 non-fiction books.

Carl Bernstein – Born in Washington, D.C. in 1944, Bernstein got his first journalism job at age 16, working in the newsroom of The Washington Star. Without finishing college, he became a reporter at the Elizabeth Daily Journal in New Jersey in 1965. A year later, he joined The Washington Post. After leaving the Post in 1976, he worked for ABC News and wrote articles for numerous magazines. He is the author of books about his parents, Pope John Paul II and Hillary Clinton and is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair magazine.

Woodward and Bernstein made great efforts to verify facts before publishing them. They have described their “unwritten rule” that they would find at least two sources to confirm any information about possible criminal wrongdoing before publishing it. This was especially important given that they often had to rely on anonymous, or unnamed, sources for their reporting. In general, not naming a source of information can reduce a report’s credibility. But Woodward and Bernstein interviewed many officials who were fearful for their jobs and possibly their personal safety. So they had to be extremely careful to make sure their reports were accurate.

By following leads, sorting through documents, interviewing hundreds of sources and untangling a web of information, Woodward and Bernstein uncovered wrongdoing at the highest levels of the U.S. government. Reporting by the Post and other news organizations as well as congressional and criminal investigations showed that people connected to the president and his re-election campaign had misused their power in ways that threatened to undermine the country’s democratic political processes. It also revealed attempts by senior officials to cover up their crimes.

Even a government of the people, by the people and for the people sometimes misuses its powers. This can threaten freedom and democracy itself. When a free press holds government officials and institutions accountable for their actions, it guards the public against such abuses. This is vital at every level of government, from public officials in a small town up to the president of the United States. Reporting that helped expose the Watergate scandal showed that no public official is above being held accountable.

• 1974 – On August 9, President Richard M. Nixon resigns. He is the first (and so far, only) U.S. president to do so.
• 1975 – The Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) group is founded with the mission “to foster excellence in investigative journalism, which is essential to a free society.”
• 1976 – “All the President’s Men,” a movie based on a book by Woodward and Bernstein and starring two famous actors (Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford), is released.
• More than 30 people, including top members of President Richard Nixon’s White House staff, plead guilty or were convicted of perjury, burglary, wiretapping, obstruction of justice and other crimes in connection to the Watergate scandal.