Investigative Reporting Involves a Ton of Work

https://unsplash.com/photos/9OPrqaDqLAs

The movie, ‘All the President’s Men’, follows the investigation of the Watergate scandal by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post. During the course of the movie Bob and Carl follow up on hundreds of leads to get their story. Many of those leads were unproductive. They went to the Library of Congress to find out what books were checked out by one of the men in the break-in of the National Democratic Headquarters building. They were hoping that the books he was reading would give them an idea of what he was involved in. They used the Yellow Pages and the White Pages to find the addresses of people they wanted to contact. They also used their contacts to provide them with information that would help them discover more clues regarding why there was a burglary of the National Democratic Committee Headquarters and who paid for it. In the White House, ‘Deep-throat’, was one of their unnamed informants, who guided Bob Woodward through the investigation. Carl and Bob got part of their story by tricking people into saying or admitting more than they wanted to. For example, Bob stated as fact something he wasn’t sure of, and their reluctant informant asked, “Who told you that?”, to which they didn’t reply, since she was the one who had just confirmed the information. The movie was a great example of how much work it was to get information and to piece that information together into the story which led to President Nixon’s downfall.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074119/

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