Two reporters. One story. A web of lies. A corrupt government. This is the basis of the film “All the President’s Men,” starring Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford as two reporters for the Washington Post.
Both assigned on the same story, Bob Woodward (Redford) and Carl Bernstein (Hoffman) begin to investigate the tomfooleries that took place at the National Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate building. It involved men breaking into the Watergate building on illegal pretenses and came to be one of the biggest governmental scandals in history.
Had the two not pursued the story to it’s fullest potential, what would have happened to their freedoms? Would the First Amendment have become nothing more than a moot point? Without the existence of the First Amendment, we would not be able to express our general thoughts and opinions about life. We would be suppressed by our own government. Had Bernstein and Woodward not persisted, it would have shown that the First Amendment was in fact bogus and not respected by the government.
The story starts like any other. The reporters hunt for evidence by conducting interviews and checking sources but things take a turn for the worse when they discover that the Democratic political campaign is being destabilized by illegal means. These means were funded by a secret account.
At this point, the reporters begin exhuming dark facts about what really happened at Watergate. Little by little, piece by piece they find that government officials are weaved into the scandal by a high up spider and that the entire system is, in fact, corrupt.
Fortunately, Woodward had an informant on the inside who provided him with hints on where to find the next set of evidences, but refused to confirm or deny information. The tangles of a dark plot unravel the further they dig. As they do, however, their careers and possibly their lives become threatened as their path leads them to corruption in the highest parts of the government.
“Not that there’s a lot riding on this. Only the First Amendment and Freedom of Press and maybe the future of our democracy,” said Ben Bradlee, executive editor of the Washington Post.
For all journalists, this can be an example of what determination and persistence can do. Sometimes you have to do the right thing despite the circumstances. In this case, it was the betrayal of their own government. The involvement of the scandal went as far up as the President of the United States. Sometimes you have to get the story and inform the public of what is happening behind closed doors. Bernstein and Woodward had to make a choice. They could have drawn the line but they risked everything to reveal one of the greatest scandals in history. As journalist, they knew they had a code of ethics to abide by. They knew that people had to know. They knew how important this story was to every citizen of this country. They knew, so they told.
