Tag Archives: the Washington Post

This Just In: Trump Bad President

Bob Woodward book 'Rage:' Trump admits to concealing true threat of coronavirus - CNNPolitics

One of the highlights of my professional career is to have once shared a front page with Bob Woodward.

While a cop reporter at The Washington Post, I wrote a small, local piece (about a gas leak, I believe) that broke late in the day, prompting editors to put it on 1A. Woodward, an associate editor at the paper, had another blockbuster investigative piece on political goings-on in D.C., so it naturally graced the cover.

I am still humbled to have shared real estate with the man, who remains a living hero of mine.

But I write this as an old man and former colleague of Woodward, not fawning neophyte.

And Bob screwed the pooch on this one.

Woodward made headlines Wednesday with details in his new book, Rage, a damning indictment of Donald Trump and his administration. The book, made up of Trump’s 18 taped interviews with Woodward, depicts a president who has betrayed the public trust and the most fundamental responsibilities of his office.

The meatiest detail is Trump’s disregard for COVID. Woodward writes that Trump called him on Feb. 7 to inform the journalist of the secret briefing he had with White House intelligence officials about the virus. The book and Post write:

“You just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed,” Trump said in a Feb. 7 call. “And so that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flus.”

“This is deadly stuff,” the president repeated for emphasis.

…Trump admitted to Woodward on March 19 that he deliberately minimized the danger. “I wanted to always play it down,” the president said. “I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”

Which leads me to this painful question: What the fuck were you doing, sitting on that detail, Bob?

We are hurtling past 190,000 American deaths to COVID-19, thanks largely to a populace ill-informed about the virulent threat of the global pandemic. Yet you knew about it by the first week of February, Bob (and, presumably, The Post)? And you chose to save that little news nugget for the hardcover book?

For the first time, Mexico records more COVID-19 deaths in a day than the U.S. - Los Angeles Times

I love you both, but fuck both of you.

The 24-7’s have run wild the outlandish details of the book (of which there are many). And few seem to take issue with the facts in the tome, including the president.

But I haven’t seen much in the way of anger or concern about Woodward and The Post relinquishing their duties as journalistic icons to inform and protect the public. How many people would have had to die before writing a straightforward news piece, book sales be damned? Apparently, not 13,899, the current body count.

I will try to keep my soap box narrow, but reporters — especially old school newspapermen — got into this job to be flashlights. Our job is to illuminate the world, particularly when there is a risk to public welfare. It’s why we once held the title “The Fourth Estate” of government.

Titles, though, don’t trend on Amazon, and they certainly can’t compete with tell-alls from Trump’s thug fixer. Or neice.

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Imagine if Woodward had been covering a war instead of a pandemic, and American casualties were nearing 200,000. And Woodward had taped interviews in which the president admitted soldiers were being sent on suicide missions to boost morale back home. Woodward would be up for treason for costing thousands of lives, and rightly so.

There are so many damning allegations in the book that it seems hard to justify a reason for the information blackout. In another instance, Woodward had terrific details on Trump’s unmarked federal crackdown on civil rights protesters:

“We’re going to get ready to send in the military slash National Guard to some of these poor bastards that don’t know what they’re doing, these poor radical lefts.”

Now that’s a detail that can wait for the book.

Trump, who is arguably the most honest liar ever in politics, has labeled the book a “political hit job.”

Wrong, Donnie. You should have taken that punch a long time ago. And Bob? You should have thrown it.

All the News That Fits, We Print

 

I have been a police reporter for 15 years, and a film reporter for another decade.

So I feel comfortable committing the following double heresy:

All the President’s Men is a lousy movie.

As a book, it’s poetry. As a story, it’s the gold standard for every aspiring reporter.

But, strictly from an entertainment perspective, the 1976 Oscar winner for Best Picture — and five other Academy Awards —  cinematically sucks.

I realized this last month, when HBO — perhaps in a plea for substantial political journalism — made it one of their feature films for the week spanning Election Day.

At least a dozen times, the movie has unspooled before me. I know the story, the characters and the circumstances inside out. I even recognized the lobby, newsroom and parking lot, as The Washington Post was my old employer, Bob Woodward my Sunday editor.

So on my most recent viewing, I decided to watch again. This time with intensified focus. Even played it with closed captioning, to absorb the nuance of the script.

No matter. It still blows.

For one, there are simply too many characters to follow. Just try keeping up with the names of more than three dozen actors with screen credits, from political wonks to Post editors. Unless you’re a journalism major in college, you likely don’t know the name Harry Rosenfeld (He was the Post’s city editor an a key figure in the scandal.). By the second hour, you need a score card and flow chart to keep track of the characters.

Second: we never meet the mysterious character behind the film, Deep Throat. The real life character, Robert Felt, was only identified posthumously.

Now imagine trying this strategy in any other film. Consider the pitch:
Producer: “So we’ve got this shadowy figure, who only meets Robert Redford in darkened garages after secretly signaling him he has found new evidence.”
Exec: “I love it. Who does it turn out to be?
Producer: “We don’t know, so we never reveal.”
Exec: “The door is that way.”

Or another scene, in which Carl Bernstein confirms his story with a source over the phone.
Producer: “It’s even got a 10-second countdown. Or count-up — the reporter is counting to ten.”
Exec: “Beautiful. What happens at 10?”
Producer: “Nothing. He confirms the story by not hanging up.”
Click

One thing it does get right: the acrobatics required to handle a telephone while trying to write down what people say. How many collective hours, I wonder, were wasted in old films of characters dialing a rotary phone?

phones

It’s easy to see why APM was an unmitigated success. For the public, it was a reminder of what a healthy press looks like in action. And they could drool over Redford.

For critics, Alan Paluka’s drama took painstaking measures to get the details right, and it did (however stultifying those details were). Good films raise the art of its subject matter.

And who in the mainstream press was going to knock it? Sure, the meetings between Deep Throat and Woodward were pure fiction. But when’s the last time reporters were portrayed by acting icons? Hollywood characterizations of reporters is typically  negative when the journalist is a minor character. But positive when they are central characters.

Finally (spoiler alert): the finale. APM concludes with no arrest, no showdown of powers. Simply a teletype, clacking the news that Richard Nixon resigned from office. Roll credits.

It was a wholly appropriate finale, one that perhaps was as spot-on as any based-on-a-true-story premise.

But ending a narrative with a few lines of text rarely makes for compelling drama.

See?