The Washington Post‘s Bob Woodward received a megablast from Newsweek‘s Howard Fineman due to his journalistic technique — yet another sign of how the once-idolized, legendary Watergate reporter’s status has changed within his profession:
MADISON — Howard Fineman, Newsweek’s chief political correspondent, said Monday night in the first program of a Drew University lecture series, that Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward had become a “court stenographer” for the Bush administration.
Standing before a crowd of nearly 300, Fineman, said Woodward went from being an outsider “burning the beltway”with his investigative work in the 1970s Watergate scandal under President Nixon to being, “an official court stenographer of the Bush administration.”
“He’s a great reporter,” Fineman said of Woodward, “but he’s become a great reporter of official history.”
Woodward has been heavily criticized ever since it was reported that he had not revealed to his editors that he had information from official sources on the Valerie Plame leak until after a federal grand jury investigation began.
These days, the balance of power has shifted in favor of the government, said Fineman, who also is a contributor to several television news programs.
As we’ve noted before, the problem is in the whole idea of “access journalism” where Woodward could produce these now-it-can-be-told insider accounts of major events. He had to become a fly on the wall…but a fly can’t get on a wall until it can get in a room to get on the wall. So what had to be done to get into the room to get on that wall?
Investigative journalism means inside info is needed but the reporter is essentially an outsider trying to unravel it all, no matter who comes out looking good or bad. Access journalism has unfortunately seemingly come to sometimes mean a form of journalism where “the get” (the story or account in published pieces and the person in the case of TV news) becomes the end in itself.
To get a “get” all kinds of techniques could be used, from glad-handing, to flattery, to the assurance that if you give an account your side will be more extensively reflected in the final news product. “Help me set the record straight” could be just that or be taken by the source to mean “help me get your spin out in detail.” Those who don’t cooperate, don’t get their insider story out and come out of it with a journalistic black eye. But does that mean their account has less validity than those who give the access and info?
No matter what the thorny issues, the bottom line is that Woodward is far from the rebel reporter of the Watergate days, pounding the pavement, checking down leads. He has become symbolic of a super-elite reporter/celebrity who cultivates top-level sources to get access to news biggies that others can’t get or have not been able to get to extract detailed in depth reporting. That in itself is no journalistic vice — it’s just that most of his accounts in recent years read more like reporting from the perspective of the establishment and elites…..a far cry from his Watergate days.
People used to go into journalism school because they were inspired by Bob Woodward. We wonder: how many are doing that today?