In praise of fearless journalism

Rating: 9/10 (5 October 2000)

It was interesting to see Alan Paluka's fine film again only a few weeks before a presidential election (indeed I saw it as an alternative to watching the civilized but mundane Liberman  Chaney vice  presidential debate). After watching the Gore - Bush debate on Tuesday and Martin Sheen in 'West Wing' on Wednesday, not to mention Michael Douglas in 'The American President' a couple of weeks ago I was suffering from an overdose of political personae and the political process. This film, however, is about newspapers and how news is made rather than about politics. It focuses almost entirely on Woodward and Bernstein of the 'Washington Post' and their early digging into the minor burglary of the offices of the Democrat National Committee that became the Watergate scandal and brought down President Richard Nixon.
It is based on Woodward's book and was made only a year or so after the scandal had subsided, but 24 years on in a different political era it is still an exciting tale of two young and not very accomplished journos who, spurred on by the fear of failure as much as anything else, and not too proud to do masses of boring legwork, provoked other people, especially the law enforcement agencies, to do the job they should have done in the first place. In the film, as in real life, it's the story that counts and not personalities, and we are spared any phony love interest or much glamourisation of the two reporters. Redford and Hoffman as the two reporters were never better and the two hours twenty minutes pass very quickly.
Having recently also read the autobiography of Katherine Graham, publisher and owner of the 'Post,' I realized we were seeing Jason Robards rather than the real editor of the 'Post' Ben Bradlee, a much more cultivated character. However the film does reflect the general support the senior executives gave to 'Woodstein,' as Bradlee called them, despite the risks involved. Former Attorney-General John Mitchell's famous sinister remark about Katy Graham getting her tits caught in the mangle is heard and the Bradlee of the film makes a brief reference to being put under a lot of pressure by the story, but not mentioned is the strong evidence that the Nixon administration tried to damage the Washington Post Company by taking away its TV licenses. Graham had to think of her employees even if she was sanguine about losing some of her personal wealth. The United States is fortunate that a few of its major newspapers have private owners who believe they have a duty to inform the public as well as to make money. One wonders what Bradlee would have been forced to do if Rupert Murdoch had owned the 'Post'. Graham explains that casting her as a character was discussed and some interesting casting suggestions made, but eventually she decided it was better for her to stay out of it.
Nearly 25 years later we still don't know the identity of 'Deep Throat', Woodward's furtive informer. Hal Holbrook, who plays the part as a prototype of the 'X Files' cancer man, has played several U S presidents but I think we can be sure that 'Deep Throat' was not Richard Nixon.
June 2005 postscript. Now we do know that Deep Throat was the Deputy Director of the FBI, Mark Felt. Despite all the cigarettes, Mr Felt is, at 91, alive and reasonably well and living in Los Angeles. The surviving Nixon aides call him a traitor. In that case we need more like him!