All The President's Men: Carl Bernstein And Bob Woodward
All the presidents Men
In the film "all the president's men" the two journalists Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward from the Washington Post try to solve the mystery of the Watergate affaire. While there voyage leads them to various ways of obtaining information they do not always stick to the journalist's codex. But how far must a journalist go to receive useful information and how strict can one obey to the journalist codex.
After the Watergate affaire Woodward is told to research on the thieves and see if there is more to it then just a simple robbery. Already at the court he finds out that all the thieves are connected with the CIA and other agencies. Trying to gain more information Woodward finds a lawyer named Marken who has been assigned …show more content…
to the case on demand of the thieves. The strange thing is that none of the five criminals ever made a phone call to ask for that request. When Woodward asks Marken what his connection to the case is he denies knowing anything about it.
The lawyer goes away saying he has no further comments. After that Woodward should respect the codex saying that every journalist has to respect the privacy of an individual. But he continues asking Marken about the case. It seems like a violation of the codex, but is it possible to gain information if one would totally obey the codex? The answer is clearly no. The Codex is more or less a guideline made to illustrate how an idle journalist works. It is somehow like an old western showdown where you could draw your weapon before the agreed sign and kill your opponent, so basically achieving your goal, but you will lose your "honour". Most tabloid reporters are like that, not interested in the codex and therefore get information anyway they want to without showing respect. But many others still believe in these guidelines and developed tricks and skills to access information without being disrespectful. Again these tricks are not always compatible with the codex but they a realistic interpretation of it. Bernstein used one of these tricks, linking the secretary away from the office of Mr Dardes. After the secretary left he sneaked inside the office
which was blocked by the secretary few seconds ago. Even though Bernstein had an appointment, Mr Dardes did not want to see him so Carl forced himself in the office. Is that breaking the codex? Once he was inside Mr Dardes reconsidered his decision of not seeing him and helped Bernstein. So it was a violation against the codex on how to obtain information but it did not directly harm Mr Dardes, since he was also willing to help him.
Another example of a trick is how Woodward and Bernstein prepared a dialog of uncertain information and present it in front of the person who knows what is true and false. This person then will either disagree if the phrase is wrong or just stay quiet which means that they agree with the fact. To confirm information that way is very dangerous since one has to trust one's intuition. Another problem is that this trick only works with certain people. They have to be undecided of his loyalty and also emotional at this time. These psychological games only work with these kinds of people.
So did Bernstein and Woodward use fair methods to gain there information? The answer is no since they definitely did not stick to the codex at all times. They used emotionally instable people to confirm there information. They used the ex-girlfriend of the person who works for the reselection comity to gain information. And the sources of the information provided by deep through are also very questionable. If on the other hand one considers how they broke the laws of the journalist codex and what great importance the article about the Watergate affaire had on the election, then one has to ask oneself weather or not laws are mad to be broken.
Marek L Spak
In the film "all the president's men" the two journalists Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward from the Washington Post try to solve the mystery of the Watergate affaire. While there voyage leads them to various ways of obtaining information they do not always stick to the journalist's codex. But how far must a journalist go to receive useful information and how strict can one obey to the journalist codex.
After the Watergate affaire Woodward is told to research on the thieves and see if there is more to it then just a simple robbery. Already at the court he finds out that all the thieves are connected with the CIA and other agencies. Trying to gain more information Woodward finds a lawyer named Marken who has been assigned …show more content…
to the case on demand of the thieves. The strange thing is that none of the five criminals ever made a phone call to ask for that request. When Woodward asks Marken what his connection to the case is he denies knowing anything about it.
The lawyer goes away saying he has no further comments. After that Woodward should respect the codex saying that every journalist has to respect the privacy of an individual. But he continues asking Marken about the case. It seems like a violation of the codex, but is it possible to gain information if one would totally obey the codex? The answer is clearly no. The Codex is more or less a guideline made to illustrate how an idle journalist works. It is somehow like an old western showdown where you could draw your weapon before the agreed sign and kill your opponent, so basically achieving your goal, but you will lose your "honour". Most tabloid reporters are like that, not interested in the codex and therefore get information anyway they want to without showing respect. But many others still believe in these guidelines and developed tricks and skills to access information without being disrespectful. Again these tricks are not always compatible with the codex but they a realistic interpretation of it. Bernstein used one of these tricks, linking the secretary away from the office of Mr Dardes. After the secretary left he sneaked inside the office
which was blocked by the secretary few seconds ago. Even though Bernstein had an appointment, Mr Dardes did not want to see him so Carl forced himself in the office. Is that breaking the codex? Once he was inside Mr Dardes reconsidered his decision of not seeing him and helped Bernstein. So it was a violation against the codex on how to obtain information but it did not directly harm Mr Dardes, since he was also willing to help him.
Another example of a trick is how Woodward and Bernstein prepared a dialog of uncertain information and present it in front of the person who knows what is true and false. This person then will either disagree if the phrase is wrong or just stay quiet which means that they agree with the fact. To confirm information that way is very dangerous since one has to trust one's intuition. Another problem is that this trick only works with certain people. They have to be undecided of his loyalty and also emotional at this time. These psychological games only work with these kinds of people.
So did Bernstein and Woodward use fair methods to gain there information? The answer is no since they definitely did not stick to the codex at all times. They used emotionally instable people to confirm there information. They used the ex-girlfriend of the person who works for the reselection comity to gain information. And the sources of the information provided by deep through are also very questionable. If on the other hand one considers how they broke the laws of the journalist codex and what great importance the article about the Watergate affaire had on the election, then one has to ask oneself weather or not laws are mad to be broken.
Marek L Spak