From: Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Counterpunch, November 17, 2005
From Reporter to Courtier
The Decline of Bob Woodward
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
and JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
... For months Woodward has been working on a book about Bush's second
term.
The White House, ecstatic at Woodward's highly flattering treatment of Bush
in Plan of Attack and Bush at War (Washington's retort to the Harry Potter
series), has been giving Woodward extraordinary access, confident that he
will put a kindly construction on their disastrous handling of the nation's
affairs.
Judy Miller was savaged for accepting what she claimed to be special
credentials from the Pentagon in return for confidentiality. So what are we
to say about Woodward, who is given special access and then repays the
favor by belittling the Plame scandal, while simultaneously concealing his
own personal knowledge of the White House's schedule on the outing of
Valerie Plame?
[Woodward is the global home office of conflicts of interest. The Observer
(UK) did a vivid profile of him in April 2004 when his _Plan of Attack_,
came out:]
President's man
The journalist who helped bring down one US President in the Seventies now
has another on the run with his book on the lead-up to the Iraq invasion.
But is he too close to the corridors of power?
By Paul Harris
Sunday April 25, 2004
The headline in last week's New York Observer summed it up. 'You're back,
Bob!' it blared. Quite so. Not since his Watergate heyday has America's most
famous journalist dominated the headlines as much as last week.
Bob Woodward's book, Plan of Attack, chronicled the build-up to the invasion
of Iraq in minute detail and with access to the President himself. Woodward
had unearthed enough startling information for a week's worth of front-page
stories. ...
Across America and then the world, news editors scratched their heads as to
what to splash with first.
... [I]n a slightly Woodwardian way, there is a story behind the story.
While the Democrats have seized on the book's revelations, many Republicans
are smiling too. Bush comes across well in the book. He is decisive and
firm. He also frequently cites God and his religious faith. Democrats
quickly forget how well that plays in the battleground states of the
Midwest.
It should not be forgotten that the Bush administration co-operated with
Woodward's efforts. His book was not so much the achievement of
'investigative journalism' but the 'access journalism' that Woodward has
come to personify. Woodward, in fact, is no outsider taking potshots at
those in power. He is no gadfly scribe. Woodward has become part of the
establishment that he chronicles so thoroughly. He has moved beyond
journalism and into the sunlit uplands of fame and fortune. Visitors to his
plush mansion in the Washington political ghetto of Georgetown, which he
shares with author wife Elsa Walsh, are always impressed by its opulence. It
is a home more reminiscent of a diplomat or Secretary of State than a
journalist. ...
For Woodward is no longer a mere journalist. He is a power player himself.
There is a key moment in Plan of Attack when - perhaps inadvertently - he
reveals how he, too, has become part of the story. It was December 2001, and
two Washington Post reporters had worked up a tale on a possible dirty bomb
threat. A senior CIA official rang Woodward at home just hours before the
story was printed to urge it be delayed. The administration was keen to get
Pakistani help on anti-terrorism and feared the story would be seen by
Islamabad as pressure via the media. Woodward put the CIA in touch with Len
Downie, the Post's executive editor. The story was held.
For critics of Woodward that shows how he acts as a 'gatekeeper' on much of
America's political journalism. The mere name Woodward (Bernstein's career
plumeted amid drink problems and divorce) is now a by-word for access to the
corridors of power. His steady output since Watergate (nine New York Times
bestsellers) has chronicled in remarkable detail the powerful, the rich and
(as with Belushi) sometimes just the plain famous of American life. His
trademark has been the accumulation of facts and colourful background
information. It is an accumulation made easier by the 'access journalism'
that his position now grants him. His books on the behind-the-scenes
dealings of his subjects are always laced with trivia: of gestures, jokes
and asides. It generates a remarkable feeling of intimacy at key moments of
history.
But he has his critics, too. One dubbed Woodward a '...mindless Sir Edmund
Hillary: He climbs for the detail because it is there, gettable by him, even
if it tells us nothing.' ...
<http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,1202937,00.html>
Carl
