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Journalism of Courage
Rarely does reality intersect with role playing the way it did two Sundays ago in Bob Woodwards living room.
Meeting him there were Carl Bernstein,his writing partner at The Washington Post during the Watergate scandal in the 1970s; Ben Bradlee,their top editor at the time; and Robert Redford,the actor who played Woodward in All the Presidents Men,the 1976 film that dramatised The Posts presidential detective work.
Jokes were cracked about the four decades that had passed since WatergateYou guys,were really lucky we recognise each other, Redford saidbut the men were together for a serious reason. Redford was starting work on another project on Watergate,this time as a documentarian.
Commissioned by the Discovery Channel,the project,All the Presidents Men Revisited,will be a two-hour television documentary about the scandal that doomed Richard M. Nixons presidency and will explore its effects on politics and the media in the 40 years since. To be able to pull the fabricated and the real together,for the first time,is kind of a juicy opportunity for us, said Eileen ONeill,the president of Discovery.
Discoverys previous effort,a collaboration with the BBC,was a five-part series in 1994. The fixation endures in part,said Stanley I. Kutler,a pre-eminent Watergate historian,because of all the presidents in the last 50 years,it is Nixon thats the most interesting.
For Redford the project represents the start of Sundance Productions,a new business that will make shows for television and the Web. Television is just booming, said Redford. Sometimes in life,he said,theres reason not to look back,but as he talked through Watergate and its consequences in Woodwards living room,he said,he felt increasingly confident that its the right time to take a look at this moment in history to inform the present.
Woodward said that the men discussed: Whats the legacy of Watergate? What do we understand? What are some of the lessons?
One of Nixons wars,Woodward said,is a war against history. He cited a book review in The Wall Street Journal two months ago by Franz Gannon,a former Nixon aide,who asserted that many questions about the scandal remain unresolved.
How did a politician as tough and canny as Richard Nixon allow himself to be brought down by a third-rate burglary? Gannon wrote. Your guess is as good as mine.
The voluminous record shows that there are answers to some of those questions, Woodward said. When I read the review,I thought,the war continues,and it should be met with facts. He said he had guided Redford and the other executive producer of All the Presidents Men Revisited,Andy Lack,to new material about the scandal,like information about the 2005 disclosure of Mark Felt,the onetime associate FBI director,as the Deep Throat source.
The documentary comes as Discovery appears to be trying to out-history the History Channel,a chief competitor,which has set ratings records with shows that stray far from the confines of history,like the reality show Pawn Stars.
ONeill,Discoverys president,said she had directed the channels staff to make sure that were delivering in the history space, particularly in what she called baby boomer history.
