Reporting

1. Key Reporting Milestones

In his book, Pulitzer's Gold, Roy J. Harris Jr. identifies four "Woodstein" articles that broke parts of the Watergate story and showed original reporting:

August 1, 1972


September 17, 1972

October 1, 1972

October 10, 1972












2. Mistake

In spite of all the good reporting, Woodward and Bernstein did make some mistakes. Their most flagrant error occurred when they said, inaccurately so, that a source revealed information in front of the grand jury. (The article where the mistake appeared is just below.) Washington Post critics used the mistake to attack the paper

October 25, 1972












3. A General Lack of Reporting
The inexperienced Washington Post reporters, Woodward and Bernstein, acted alone in their pursuit of the Watergate story for many months. Other print reporters, especially members of the White House press core, stuck to "mouth piece journalism".... meaning they simply repeated everything they heard at press briefings without ever digging deeper. TV shied away from Watergate because reporters/producers thought the story seemed too complicated and not visual enough.

Walter Cronkite , as the only other reporter besides Woodward and Bernstein to cover Watergate in the beginning, completed two, short special reports. Cronkite's reports, however, failed to dig as deeply compared to the "Woodstein" chronicles.

4. Obstacles

The Washington Post faced several obstacles in its pursuit of the Watergate story:

A. The White House tried to shut down two Florida TV stations owned by the Post.
B. The White House leaked information to the Washington Star, a Washington Post.

competitor, instead of to the Post. The White House also purposefully avoided giving the Post

information.

C. Other news organizations ridiculed the "Woodstein" team when it made a mistake.
E. The Post faced threats for running with the story. John Mitchell, Richard Nixon's Attorney General and campaign manager, told Bernstein, "Are you going to run with this? If you are Katy Graham's tit is going to get caught in a wringer." (Matt Welch, Mallory Jensen, and Jacqueline Reeves, "Blogsword and Its Gravity," Columbia Journalism Review, September/October 2003, 20.)

5. Deep Throat
The way "Woodstein" reported on Watergate made the use of anonymous sources more acceptable and influenced the press to use them more often. The Washington Post kept Deep Throat's identity secret for more than 30 years.

Deep Throat turned out to be Mark Felt, the second in command at the FBI. He finally revealed his identity in 2005.

Associated Press story about "Deep Throat" or Mark Felt:

"All the President's Men," a film based off the book Woodward and Bernstein wrote about covering Watergate, has its own version of Deep Throat:

6. Pulitzer

Interestingly enough, the "Woodstein" team never won the Pulitzer prize for national or investigative reporting. And only after the board overruled the original jury did the Washington Post earn the gold medal for public service.