Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein exposed the Watergate scandal in 1972, following tips from the anonymous “Deep Throat.” Their investigation led to President Richard Nixon’s 1974 resignation, earning the Washington Post the 1973 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.
Woodward spoke with Evan Smith, former Texas Tribune CEO and professor of practice at UT’s Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, about the pipeline from the Nixon to the Trump administration, the relevance of “All The President’s Men” today and the current state of journalism at the Paramount Theatre on Wednesday night.
“Bob and Carl (Bernstein) famously revealed official corruption and changed history,” Smith said. “(Journalists) looked back at what Woodward and Bernstein had done and thought, ‘This is something I want to do.’”
Smith first asked Woodward about the passing of Robert Redford, his friend for over 50 years. Redford insisted on playing Woodward in the Oscar-winning 1976 film, “All The President’s Men,” emphasizing the reporting relationship between Woodward and Bernstein.
“(Bernstein said), ‘You can’t let anyone in the newsroom think we’re talking to Hollywood,’” Woodward said. “‘If they know that, we are finished.’ I dodged Redford for a while. It didn’t work because he persisted.”
The Paramount Theatre promoted the event with a picture of Redford as Woodward, Smith noting the strong association between the two.
“When that movie came out, I was unmarried and dating a lot,” Woodward said. “I called women up and I identified myself. I said, ‘I’d like to take you out.’ … They’d open the door, and I (saw) disappointment.”
Woodward shared quotes from Redford on Instagram following his passing. On New Year’s Eve 2021, Redford told Woodward he re-watched “All The President’s Men.”
“I was taken aback by how appropriate (and) timely it was and how little has really changed,” Redford said to Woodward. “We don’t have Nixon anymore, we have Trump.”
Woodward, in one of many calls with Redford about the U.S. democracy, told Redford that he believed Donald Trump was trying to destroy democracy. Woodward said to Smith that as a journalist, he supports the investigation of the Trump administration.
“We’re going to pass,” Woodward said. “One of the thoughts we’re going to have is, ‘Did we do enough?’ If this is an intolerable risk, you have to put everything into finding out … what he’s up to.”
In the foreword to the 50th anniversary edition of the book, “All The President’s Men,” Woodward and Bernstein said they believed America would never again elect a president who “tramples the national interest and succeeds in undermining democracy,” until Trump.
In covering the Trump administration, Woodward advised journalists to keep digging. He said that while at his father’s law firm, he used to go up a ladder to the attic and look at the old case files. His advice to young journalists: “pull down the ladder.”
“I saw a hidden world that is not accessible to the public normally,” Woodward said. “Journalism (is) a search through and to the disposed files — what somebody was finished with or wanted to hide in the bottom drawer. All you have to do is crawl up the attic … and start looking.”
