Woodward, Bernstein, Bradlee reunite at 2007 SPJ National Convention

Ben Bradlee, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein recount the breaking of the Watergate break-in and relate it to today's world of journalism

Deputy Attorney General, Dept. of Justice

Sessions on digital media, “backpack journalism” and the effects of the Internet culture on the media were among the most popular workshops at the 2007 SPJ Convention and National Journalism Conference in Washington, D.C. in October. The headline event, however, was a blast from the past.

Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein and Ben Bradlee reunited for a panel on “Watergate -- 35 Years Later,” along with NPR senior news analyst Daniel Shorr, Alicia Shepard, author of “Woodward and Bernstein: Life in the Shadow of Watergate,” and moderator Bob Schieffer of CBS News.

Woodward and Bernstein, who were reporters at The Washington Post when they broke the story of the 1972 break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate hotel, said they followed where the story took them.

“If you let people talk and listen respectfully, stories will go where you would never imagine,” Bernstein said. “That’s what’s so great about the Watergate story. It’s all about where the reporting takes you.”

Bradlee, who was vice president and executive editor of The Washington Post at the time of Watergate and still serves as the paper’s vice president, said the story was full of enticing details for a journalist.

“One of the burglars was asked where he worked, and he said under his breath, ‘The CIA,’” Bradlee said. “If there are three letters that can really get a good newsman going, it’s CIA. What was this CIA guy doing in a courtroom for petty larceny?”

Woodward said Bradlee provided just the right amount of discipline for the two reporters as they developed the Watergate story.

“The Washington Post at that time was a terrific place to work,” Woodward said. “There was a sense that you were on your own, but there was a sense of discipline. Ben [Bradlee] was at his best not when he let us run our stories, but with what he made us leave out of the story. He was a real hard ass.”

The reporters and Bradlee downplayed their success in keeping secret the identity of their source, Deep Throat, who revealed himself in 2005 as former FBI associate director Mark Felt.

“A Russian novelist said the only way three people can keep a secret is if two of them are dead,” Woodward said. “We kept the secret because that was the bargain.”

Bernstein added, laughing, that, “the key to why the secret was kept is none of us told our first wives.”

The panelists also talked about ways in which the Watergate story might have been different today.

“We’ve now had 25 to 30 years of ideological warfare,” Bernstein said. “The story today would be even more incendiary.”

He added that the Internet and 24-hour news cycle might have helped the story develop faster -- but possibly with more errors -- if it broke today.

“There’s a real spotlight on the so-called mainstream press that did not exist at the time of Watergate,” Bernstein said. “When there are cracks in stories in the mainstream press today, they get developed elsewhere. But there is also so much garbage out there on the Web it throws up a great confusion that didn’t exist at the time of Watergate.”

Woodward said reporters -- then and now -- have to balance the urge to get the story quickly with the need to get the story right.

“There are two driving forces in journalism and the Internet,” Woodward said. “Speed and impatience. Good reporting is the opposite -- slow and patient.”