Watching this Watergate classic makes me yearn for pre-Trump America
At a moment when a great country on the verge of its 250th birthday feels its foundations shaking, it is worth reflecting on a more recent but still powerful American anniversary. 50 years have passed since its publication All the President’s Men. This was the classic 1976 film adaptation of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s book; Washington Post The Watergate break-in finally brought down a US president.
Woodward and Bernstein were young employees working at the local pace. Posting. They were not among the paper’s prestigious coterie of political reporters. Almost by chance, they ended up covering a story that seemed like “nothing” as we Americans might say today: the arrest late one night in 1972 of a group of men in an office building in the Watergate complex, a vast residential and commercial development on the western edge of downtown Washington. The Watergate “burglars” were actually planting surveillance devices in the offices of the Democratic campaign committee (the people trying to defeat Republican president Richard Nixon that November). Slowly, meticulously, and without fail, Woodward and Bernstein uncovered the dark forces behind the intrusion.
Since then, despite efforts by Nixon’s aides and Nixon himself to minimize the scandal, numerous officials in his administration and many of his top aides have gone to prison in what appears to be a spectacular criminal panorama.
But still, by today’s standards of the abysmal corruption in the Trump administration, the echo of Watergate seems like a repercussion from a relatively innocent time. Now, with frightening regularity, we learn that one or another of US President Donald Trump’s administration departments has engaged in far greater crimes: the US military’s summary execution of people on boats; local law enforcement officers filmed the killings of American citizens with no apparent provocation; civil rights violations on an industrial scale.
The early 1970s recall a happier time for journalism. At that time, Washington Post He might send two local reporters to cover a break-in. Could he have the resources to do this today? It laid off a third of its staff; is a loss of income; and suffered exodus of at least 250,000 subscribers After the company’s owner, Jeff Bezos, nullified the editorial board’s plan to support Democratic candidate Kamala Harris against Trump in the 2024 presidential election.
So we have compelling reasons to congratulate these two young reporters. Books about adventure, All the President’s MenIt would become a bestseller. It is not widely known that Robert Redford came to them with a vision of making a movie about their work, even before the book was written. It wasn’t easy to achieve this. “It’s always the same thing,” screenwriter William Goldman would later say. “They go and knock on your door. ‘Hello, we’re Woodward and Bernstein. Can we talk to you?’ A lot of people say no. No major studio wants to make this kind of movie.”
Redford persevered, and the result was a hugely profitable success, earning a Best Picture nomination. Redford took on the role of the honest Woodward; Dustin Hoffman played the disheveled Bernstein. Some scenes became turning points, particularly the spooky late-night meetings in a parking lot between Woodward and his now-legendary source, Deep Throat. “Those aren’t smart guys,” says Deep Throat, referring to Nixon’s myrmidons. “And things got out of control.” A slight sense of threat arose. To paraphrase an old horror movie trope, the killer is inside the house. Make this the White House. Goldman would win an Oscar for his screenplay.
Now, as in 1972, all of the president’s people, from the vice president on down, deny it and cover it up. (There are more women these days.) Nixon’s people went on television and presented fabricated numbers to distract them. Behind the scenes they threatened staff and used scare tactics to prevent the real story from coming out. They continued their message in public and attacked the media as partisan and anti-American. Sound familiar?
The most touching part of watching All the President’s Men The sad situation in 2026 Washington Post. His situation is much worse than most people think. Amazon billionaire Bezos bought the paper in 2013 and vowed to revive it. In 2024, his intentions took a sharp turn when he halted the paper’s upcoming endorsement of Kamala Harris, saying the imprint would no longer endorse her in the presidential race.
The suburbs around Washington DC are among the wealthiest and most developed areas in the country. A large percentage of the professional workforce is part of the government or its industries. When Trump-incited thugs invaded the U.S. Capitol and brutally attacked its defenders, for Washingtonians it was an attack on democracy and a building that is at the center of what they do every day.
Then came Trump’s Office of Government Efficiency and his attacks on the federal bureaucracy. People in Washington know that people in the bureaucracy are often underpaid and underappreciated; I am proud to do the people’s work; and that they work under serious ethical and professional constraints. The senselessness and cruelty of the layoffs and the department horrifies professionals, whether Democrats or Republicans.
Meanwhile, Bezos shared a post showing closeness to the Trump administration. gushing tweets and swiped $40 million ($A56 million) from the First Lady via Prime Video for a dull piece of filmic hagiography. All these lost subscriptions created a financial crisis at the newspaper, with a devastating 300-person layoff in February. HE created a new decline in subscriptions. to mail alienated the core electorate; and then what for many was the last remaining reason to subscribe evaporated.
Does this sound like a business plan to you?
What’s going on? to mail It is not a repositioning. This is the slow-motion disintegration of another key part of the country’s checks and balances. The institution we see All the President’s Men It is unrecognizable today. A Pulitzer Prize-winning friend of mine at the newspaper wrote me a letter recently. “ to mail “We know he is dead,” he said.
Bill Wyman is the former deputy editor-in-chief of National Public Radio in Washington. He teaches at the University of Sydney.
Bill Wyman is the former deputy editor-in-chief of National Public Radio in Washington. He teaches at the University of Sydney.
