 | During his visit to campus as a Poynter Fellow, Bob Woodward met with student reporters at the Yale Daily News and delivered the Gary G. Fryer Memorial Lecture. |
In the winter of 1973 -- when then 29-year-old journalist Bob Woodward '65 of The Washington Post was just gaining notoriety for his reporting on the Watergate scandal with his colleague Carl Bernstein -- he was invited to have lunch with the newspaper's publisher, Katharine Graham.
During their lunch, Graham posed "the killer question," Woodward recounted in an Oct. 25 campus talk.
"When are we going to find out the truth -- all the truth -- about Watergate?" she asked Woodward.
Thinking about how intimidating some officials in the Nixon administration were as they attempted to cover up the scandal, Woodward answered, "Never."
Graham looked at him with a "pained" expression, the journalist recalled, and retorted, "Never? Don't tell me never."
"I left that luncheon a motivated employee, but it wasn't a threat, it was a statement of purpose," said Woodward in his talk, the annual Gary G. Fryer Memorial Lecture sponsored by the University's Poynter Fellowship in Journalism.
What Graham was saying, explained Woodward, was that he should use whatever resources the newspaper had to unravel the facts about Watergate and President Richard Nixon's connection to it.
"That's something we do sometimes in the newspaper business, get to the bottom of things," said Woodward, whose Watergate reporting earned The Washington Post a Pulitzer Prize. "Sometimes we fail. But that's the ideal, getting to the bottom of something."
Now assistant managing editor of the Post, the journalist said that in its impatience to get the news out quickly, today's faster-paced media business succeeds far less often in digging for information and getting all the facts.
While covering Watergate, Woodward noted, he and Bernstein would sometimes spend up to three weeks working on a story before it was published. Today's journalists rarely spend that kind of time, he said. He described news today as "snapshots," adding that the current trend is not the kind of journalism Graham once inspired.
Woodward recalled one example of shallow reporting during the trial of professional basketball player Kobe Bryant for sexual assault. He watched a television news network repeatedly zeroing in on a reporter whose sole offering was to say "I'm here live" as he stood in front of the courthouse, with no actual news to report.
"It's silly ... and unnecessary to the business," said Woodward, who spoke before a capacity crowd in the Law School's Levinson Auditorium.
Woodward also revealed a bit of advice he and Bernstein got from Graham after they achieved fame for breaking news of the White House's criminal activities, which ultimately led to the resignation of Nixon in 1974.
In a letter she sent to the two reporters, Graham wrote, "Beware the demon pomposity," Woodward recalled.
Today, he said, that demon "is everywhere in our business."
The lack of quality reporting, Woodward claimed, has resulted in "a gap between the president and the public."
"The business of journalism," he continued, is to "push against the idea of secret government" and other "secretive dealings." He warned that secret government has become a "real threat" and should be one of the public's chief concerns.
In keeping with that aim, Woodward described his recent book "Plan of Attack" as an "excavation" of President George W. Bush's decision-making process regarding the invasion of Iraq.
During three-and-a-half hours of meetings with the president over seven days -- "the longest interview with a president ever," Woodward said -- he was able to ask some 500 questions about the decision to engage the nation in war.
He recalled how Bush spoke about the country's "duty" to "liberate" people, and said that these "big" words, as well as Bush's description of the Coalition of Freedom's "zeal" for that mission, are at the "core" of Bush and his decision to wage war.
The journalist also spoke about how then-Secretary of State Colin Powell urged the president to think about possible consequences of war, advice which some misinterpreted as opposition, Woodward said.
"He wasn't [against the war], but he wanted it thought through well and justified," stated Woodward, noting that in a conversation with Bush, Powell mentioned what has been called the "Pottery Barn rule": If you break it, you own it.
"Here we are, Oct. 25, 2005," Woodward stated. "We broke it, we own it."
While he said the war in Iraq might seem like a bad decision today, Woodward commented that that view may be different 25 years from now. "There may be less terrorism, more stability in the Middle East, and there may be a democracy in Iraq," he noted.
The journalist said he asked Bush how he thought history would judge the war.
"He shrugged and said, 'History, we don't know. We'll all be dead,'" recalled Woodward.
"He was ducking the question, admittedly," the reporter continued. "But he's right, we don't know." Woodward added that President Harry Truman was "thought to be a fool" during his tenure but is now judged differently "through the lens of history." Likewise, he said that U.S. efforts to assassinate Castro are viewed in a different light now than they were 40 years ago.
Despite Woodward's lengthy interview with the president about his decision to invade Iraq, the journalist said that "to this day, it's not clear to me why he wanted to do it." He is now working on a book about Bush's second term.
Woodward told his audience that he believes courage is "the most important trait a president can have" and that it sometimes means the president has "to walk the road alone." He added that when new information about a decision reveals it to have been a bad one, the president must have the courage to come forward and acknowledge the need "to change course."
The war in Iraq and the American public's increasing disapproval of it are "at the emotional center of where this country is now," said the journalist -- hence, the reasons for Bush's decision to go to war are almost more important now than they were when that choice was made.
"I won't, in the midst of this, judge it," said Woodward. "But there is a need for more facts."
A video of Woodward's lecture can be viewed at www.yale.edu/opa/media.
-- By Susan Gonzalez
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