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Bob Woodward, and bacon-coolers: An exclusive interview

June 5, 2007

He has been called the best pure reporter of his generation and perhaps the best reporter of all time.

Bob Woodward has worked for The Washington Post since 1971. In 1972, he teamed with Carl Bernstein to investigate the burglary at the Watergate office building, reporting that led to The Post winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1973.

Since that time he has won nearly every American journalism award, including the National Affairs Pulitzer Prize and the Gerald R. Ford Prize for Distinguished Reporting on the Presidency in 2003.

Woodward has co-authored or authored 11 number one national best-selling non-fiction books including All The President's Men and Bush at War – more than any contemporary American writer. Recently, he sat down with Kelsey Howarth, Senior Writer for Cognos, an IBM company, to talk about accountability, the media, and what it means to be a leader.

Is government accountability on the decline?

KH: Some have said that the Watergate scandal issued in a new era of accountability in government. Others say that legacy has run out. Do you feel governments are more open and accountable today than in the 70s?

BW: "Governments are now much better trained and more skillful at managing their image. They're better at hiding and keeping things secret. As a result, there is probably less accountability, but more effort put into getting at the truth, getting to the bottom of things.

It goes up and down. There are moments of immense accountability and then there are moments of diminished accountability."

"Daytime is for golf and naps"

KH: Some have stated that the Watergate exposure could never happen today because spin doctors have become too good at moving attention away and diluting serious issues. Do you agree?

BW: "The Nixon White House was pretty good at attempting to distract too, but we knew there was too much going on there. They were working 24-7 to make sure we didn't find out what was really going on.

Carl Bernstein and I had the luxury of time from the Washington Post to try to get around the apparatus they erected.

You can always get around any apparatus. Sometimes it simply takes more time and sometimes it's more difficult.

I recently saw the movie version of All The President's Men and came away realizing that the movie takes place mostly at night. I realize that you get a better version of the truth at night, so I work more and more at night. Daytime is for golf and naps, but night time is when you should work."

"Speed and impatience"

KH: With all the sources of information streaming in – the Internet, 24-hour news channels – has it become more difficult or easier to find the truth?

BW: "That's an important question. First of all, Internet culture, the cable news culture, and the gossip culture (or, as my former partner Bernstein calls it, "the idiot culture") demand two things: speed and impatience. Give it to me now. Give me a fill. Give me the latest.

That's not really the way you find out what is going on. This culture of speed and impatience can lead you down the wrong path. What you have to do is spend weeks, months, sometimes even years on a story."

Balancing news with profits

KH: Last year we spoke with Ted Koppel, who stated that the minute delivering the news became a profitable business with 60 Minutes, networks started to spend less time probing and analyzing events. Now they just want to be first. Do you agree?

BW: "60 Minutes is actually probably the most serious ongoing enterprise in television news because they do spend time on things and try to get to the bottom of issues.

I'm not worried about the profitability angle. In fact, I think the more profit a news organization makes and as long as they truly understand their core function, the owners will spend more money on news and give people more time to work on stories."

"People just want the news straight"

KH: The media has been criticized as being too partisan with too many hidden agendas. Would you agree with that?

BW: "In some cases, yes. I think part of the problem is that often the agendas are not hidden at all – they're out in the open. I think people just want the news straight. A political spin on what's going on is not useful to citizens.

People can figure out what they think. I think we should simply tell them what happened and why."

We need more "bacon coolers"

KH: If the media is a watchdog for government and people are losing faith in the media, what is the road back for restoring confidence in the media?

BW: "The road back is turning out a product that is vital and essential to people. In the newspaper business we used to call it the "bacon-cooler."

If you are reading the newspaper and eating breakfast, this is the story that is so good, arresting, and important that the bacon cools on your fork while you're reading.

We need more stories like that, where somebody will literally pause and say "I have to know this. This is vital to my life."

Seeing people at their best

KH: You've seen people and government at their worst, but I imagine you've seen a lot of good, too. Tell me one of your favorite stories about people and government at their best?

BW: "I think that Senator Ervin, who led the Watergate Committee, was somebody who was gutsy and courageous, fair-minded but tough, and ran one of the greatest investigations ever conducted by the Senate, or by Congress for that matter.

It's the crown jewel of investigations. He did it by hiring lawyers and investigators to dig, and dig, and dig, and he insisted on testimony of first-hand witnesses, and the production of documents and evidence."

Qualities of a leader

KH: Turning to politics, what would you consider the essential qualities of a good leader?

BW: "The qualities of a good leader are something I have actually thought a lot about. I think the most important trait a leader can have is courage. Courage often means walking the road alone and doing something you think is right.

It also means having the courage to reverse yourself if you think you've made a mistake. Those are the two versions of courage leaders have to wrestle with – should I stick with the course I'm on or should I change it? Both take courage."

KH: Are the right kinds of people getting into the White House?

BW: That's the system we have: people self-select and decide to run. We've had a lot of good leaders. I think it is the job of the journalist to write biography, to tell people about the person who's running for president.

It is our job to go deep and explain who they are, and not just cover the latest controversy, the polls, or the back and forth.

Character is action. If you know who somebody is, you're going to have a pretty good idea whether to vote for them or not.

Candidates should be covered, but not obsessively. What we should obsess about in journalism is who these people are. The answer is in their biography, in going back to the beginning of their lives."

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