All the President's Men Essay Questions

What are “non-denial denial” and “dirty tricks,” and how do they contribute to the investigative reporting process by which Woodward and Bernstein get to the truth?

Woodward and Bernstein must methodically piece together snatches of information here and there, figuring out the truth from both what is known and what is not known. Interpretation often requires learning how to correctly incorporate what they come to term a “non-denial denial” into their investigation. A non-denial denial is the means of evasively answering questions by members of the Nixon administration that appear to deny any wrongdoing actually took place as a way of denying that they committed wrongdoing. They must also use this methodical approach as a way of separating mere dirty tricks from the far deeper level of illegal activity that has the potential to bring high-ranking members of the Nixon administration like Attorney General John Mitchell into court to face charges of obstruction of justice. In the parlance of the Watergate Scandal, dirty tricks means sophomoric and low-impact subversive activities by low-level Nixon campaign workers like Donald Segretti directed against Democratic candidates for President deemed potentially troublesome if nominated to run against Nixon in 1972.

How does All the President’s Men's exposure of corruption and abuses of power reveal the importance of investigative journalism for democracy?

The corruption that is uncovered and exposed begins with the 1972 attempted burglary of the National Democratic Committee Headquarters in Washington, DC and that is also where the film begins. The Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C. was the site of the break-in by five burglars that eventually led to the resignation of Pres. Richard Nixon. In the aftermath of that scandal, the term Watergate was applied to cover the entirety of the scandal which eventually was discovered to stretch well beyond the break-in that led to the whole unraveling of the Nixon Presidency. The strength of All the President’s Men is the way that that it reveals how what at first seems to be a minor, low-level newspaper investigation into a meaningless “third-rate burglary” eventually does become a tale of how a free and unrestricted media is an absolute necessity for exposing corruption and abuses of power within a government.

How might All the President’s Men actually be viewed as the last hurrah of investigative journalism in America?

Watching the methodical process by which the two Washington Post reporters who covered the scandal from the break-in to the resignation of President Nixon go about transforming the story of a third-rate burglary into the single biggest political story of the century makes it difficult to believe such a story could ever be told again in exactly the same way. The entire process of journalism as practiced by Woodstein and demonstrated in All the President’s Men is likely never to be repeated in a media industry where “increasing profits requires attracting larger audiences and more readers, and as many media companies have found, providing higher-quality news programming on politically important topics does not always guarantee increased audience ratings or numbers of readers" (Dautrich and Yalof).

Rather, news that provides more entertainment tends to get larger audience shares. What makes this dependence upon "infotainment" all the more discouraging is that—as All The President's Men shows—it often takes prolonged digging into seemingly-minor stories to reveal major, world-changing truths. The subsuming of the news media into the more intensely profit-driven entertainment media that is ever-more dependent upon “breaking news” as part of the 24-hour news cycle has damaged the methodological approach necessary for good journalism.

How do Woodward and Bernstein work as a team?

In many ways, Woodward and Bernstein are obstacles to themselves at the beginning of the film. They are competitive and distrustful. Bernstein is too aggressive, Woodward is too fresh at the paper. Their weaknesses become their strengths when they work together. They help each other come to conclusions. Bernstein channels his aggression into the right channels. Woodward learns to be persistent. They go from competing with each other (Bernstein stealing Woodward's work) to giving each other ideas and tips and ultimately letting the other use the skillset on the stories that they are pursuing. By the end of the film, they earn the title "Woodstein" by working as an effective journalism team.

How are the lessons of All the President's Men still applicable in today's world?

In many ways, the Nixon administration's reactions to the Washington Post's stories (flat denial, slander of the paper's political views) is a precursor to recent insistence by politicians that the media is simply "fake news." Painting the Washington Post as a partisan paper creates an opportunity to discredit the views of its writers and tack an agenda onto their journalism. The Nixon playbook of creating an "us" versus "them" mentality and painting the press as an enemy is a good political tactic; it also appears to mean there is something to hide.