Bob Woodward
probably hoped that the long holiday weekend would break the momentum
of an uproar that suddenly confronted him
midway through November. But three days after Thanksgiving, on NBC’s
“Meet the Press,” a question about the famed Washington Post
reporter provoked anything but the customary adulation.
“I
think none of us can really understand Bob’s silence for two years
about his own role in the case,” longtime Post journalist
David Broder told viewers. “He’s explained it by saying he did not want
to become involved and did not want to face a subpoena, but
he left his editor, our editor, blind-sided for two years and he went
out and talked disparagingly about the significance of the
investigation without disclosing his role in it. Those are hard things
to reconcile.”
An
icon of the media establishment, Broder is accustomed to making excuses
for deceptive machinations by the White House and
other centers of power in Washington. His televised rebuke of Woodward
on Nov. 27 does not augur well for current efforts to salvage
Woodward’s reputation as a trustworthy journalist.
The
Woodward saga is a story of a reporter who, as half of the Post duo
that broke open Watergate, challenged powerful insiders
— and then, as years went by, became one of them. He used confidential
sources to expose wrongdoing at the top levels of the U.S.
government
— and then, gradually, became cozy with high-placed sources who
effectively used him…
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