I was chatting with a couple men last night whose voices are as familiar to me as my own. They knew I was a journalist and had taught journalism for a long time, and one asked me what I thought about the state of journalism in this country today.
In a way, that was like being asked by God what I thought about creation. For their names are Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, and they are the most famous reporters in history.
Forty-seven years ago this summer, there was a break-in at an office complex in Washington, D.C., and Woodward, then a 29-year-old reporter at the Washington Post, was sent off to cover it on a Saturday morning. Bernstein was soon assigned to help, and they became a team. The name of the office complex was the Watergate, and you know the rest.
Two years later, thanks to a series of investigations triggered by their reporting, Richard Nixon became the first and only President ever to resign. Their reporting had literally changed history, and their names became synonymous with journalism.
Nobody will ever know how many young people became journalists because of them, or because of the essentially faithful way they were portrayed in the movie, All the President’s Men.
They have also both done important and valuable work in the many years since. They were at Macomb Community College last to give the annual Jim Jacobs Civic Engagement Project lecture, in this case called Building Block of Democracy: The Role of the Free Press in America. Frankly, I wish everyone could have heard them.
They were witty, serious, engaging and not the least pompous or full of themselves. I happen to know they discounted their lecture fee considerably, when they learned that they were coming to an educational institution and would spend the afternoon interacting with students.
Their message to the adults that evening was something both left and right need and needed to hear. Yes, like it or not, they agreed Donald Trump is the legitimately elected President
But he is also the most dangerous President we have ever had, because he has no idea what the job is, and that the biggest responsibility of any President is to prevent World War III.
His nature and governing style, Woodward said, is to create organizational chaos, but any President has far too much power to do that safely. We should indeed be deeply alarmed, said Woodward, who has written a dozen books about Presidents and the presidency.
And yes, our democracy is under attack; if it were not for journalism, we might not still have one. Bernstein, often a perceptive and sometimes harsh critic of journalism, said there were vast differences between Nixon and Trump and their administrations.
But, he added, there was one big similarity: Their hatred for and attempt to discredit the legitimate press. He told the chilling story of how John Mitchell, back he was Nixon’s attorney general, had hissed at him that “we are going to do a story on you two boys,” an obvious attempt at intimidation if there ever was one.
When asked what we should do about Trump, Woodward and Bernstein said determining that was not what journalists do. “Our job is to give you the best obtainable version of the truth,” Bernstein said. Woodward added that journalists also have to continue to strive to give people the best possible product, something that is crucial to all our survival.
Journalism is, he said, “the essential block that enables democracy to function.” He didn’t add that we need that now more than ever, although it is very clear that we do.
