Saturday, November 24, 2007

All the President's Men

I recently had the opportunity to view the film "All the President's Men" starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman. Based on the real life story of the journalists behind the Watergate scandal, this movie tells the story of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's quest to get to the bottom of the scandal. The movie tells the story quite superbly as it shows the reporters going through painstaking research as well as getting involved in some action scenes. Relating this film to current day media may be difficult, but we can see aspects of this past story of investigative journalism in what many reporters do today.
Although newspapers are no longer that popular with the younger generation, and seem to be getting even less, that does not mean that the style of reporting we saw in "All the President's Men" is not there. It is simply harder to find. Most of what we find would be seen on television, as major stories are hardly ever broken on the newspaper anymore now that we have around the clock news channels. Although people like Dan Rather claim that they are just a tool to read the news, there are people like Edward R. Murrow who will put themselves on the line to lead investigations into problems in the political arena. There are still Edward R. Murrow's' out there just as there are Bob Woodward's and there are Carl Bernstein's', it's just more difficult to find them.

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