Bob Woodward
- This article is about American journalist Bob Woodward. You may be looking for Robert Woodward, the Nobel Prize-winning chemist.
Robert Upshur "Bob" Woodward (born March 26, 1943) is one of the best-known journalists in the United States, thanks largely to his work in helping uncover the Watergate scandal of President Richard Nixon while working as a reporter for the Washington Post. He has since written ten bestselling books detailing major events.
History
Born in Geneva, Illinois, and a graduate of Yale University, Woodward served in the United States Navy as a communications officer.
He began his newspaper career with the Sentinel of Montgomery County, Maryland. He joined The Washington Post in 1971, and in 1981 became assistant managing editor for investigations.
He and colleague Carl Bernstein were assigned to investigate the June 17, 1972 burglary of the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee at Washington, D.C. office building called Watergate. Their work led to uncovering a large number of political "dirty tricks" used by Nixon to ensure his re-election. In 1973, they won the Pulitzer Prize for this reporting, and their book about the scandal, All the President's Men was a best-seller that was later turned into a movie (1976) starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman.
Since Watergate, Woodward has remained in the public eye by writing eight non-fiction books covering topics ranging from the US Supreme Court to the death of comic John Belushi to the second Bush administration's preparations for the Iraq war.
In a series of articles published in January 2002, he and Dan Balz described the events at Camp David in the aftermath of September 11. In these they mention the Worldwide Attack Matrix.
Style
Woodward uses a distinct approach to writing non-fiction. In preparation, he tries to obtain the maximum amount of information on his subject, through interviews, documents, transcripts, and recordings. He then uses this information to re-create the event in the form of a story with an omniscient narrator, present tense events and dialogue.
However, this style has received a great deal of criticism. Reviewing The Final Days, Anthony Lewis called the style "a trade in which the great grant access in return for glory."
And in the same way Woodward passes on the view of his sources unquestioningly, he avoids considering the implications of the information he presents. Joan Didion concluded that Woodward writes "books in which measurable cerebral activity is virtually absent." Woodward "will be civil ..., will not feel impelled to make connections between what he is told and what is already known, [] will treat even the most patently self-serving account as if untainted by hindsight, [and] will be, above all, and herein can be found both Mr. Woodward's compass and the means by which he is set adrift, 'fair.' ... [which] has too often come to mean [] a scrupulous passivity, an agreement to cover the story not as it is occurring but as it is presented, which is to say as it is manufactured."
Delay
Perhaps because Woodward does not think about the implications of the information he collects, he has often sat on information, not presenting it until after it could make a difference. In Veil, he includes an interview with William Casey indicating that he personally knew of the sale of arms to the contras but he did not publish this until after the Congressional hearings on the matter. And in The Commanders he indicates that Colin Powell opposed Operation Desert Storm, yet Woodward did not publish this fact before Congress voted on it, when it could have made a difference.
Fraud
Woodward has often been accused of exaggeration and outright fabrication by other journalists. Reviewing The Brethren, Anthony Lewis focused on one key passage where the book claims Justice Brennan changed his vote to curry favor with Justice Blackmun. The book states:
- One of Brennan's clerks thought that if Brennan had seen the facts as Marshall presented them, he would not have voted the other way. He went to talk to Brennan and, thirty minutes later, returned shaken. Brennan understood that Marshall's position was correct, but he was not going to switch sides now, the clerk said. This was not just a run-of-the-mill case for Blackmun. Blackmun had spent a lot of time on it, giving the trial record a close reading. He prided himself on his objectivity. If Brennan switched, Blackmun would be personally offended. That would be unfortunate, because Blackmun had lately seemed more assertive, more independent of the Chief. Brennan felt that if he voted against Blackmun now, it might make it more difficult to reach him in the abortion cases or even the obscenity cases.
Lewis found the clerk who had talked to Brennan, TIME. Lewis tracked down the clerk who was the source of the notes; he denied having made the comments Woodward attributed to him. His wife, who sat in on the interview, concurred. Lewis also finds additional problems with Woodward's note-taking practices.
Books
Woodward is one of few authors to have authored or coauthored nine books that have all remained number one on the New York Times Best Seller list for several months. They are:
