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THE UNIVERSAL JOURNALIST
investigating 64 Atlanta financial institutions for possible breaches of the discrimination laws.
How to run investigative operations The subjects for investigations come to papers in all kinds of ways: tips from contacts; by accident; a seemingly routine story that subsequent information indicates is far bigger; a reporter’s own observations; a runof-the-mill story which escalates bit by bit, or one where every question you ask throws up other, increasingly important, questions. This was the case with perhaps the most famous journalistic investigation of all – Watergate. It began in June 1972 with a breakin at the Democratic Party’s headquarters in the Watergate Building in Washington. It ended just over two years later with the resignation of the most powerful man on earth, President Richard Nixon. The role of the President and his staff in the original burglary and much else besides (phone-taps, slush-funds and, most important of all, the cover-up of these illegal activities) would never been known had it not been for investigative reporters. The two main ones were Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward of the Washington Post. When they started working on the story, in a mood of mutual distrust, it was a routine crime story. Five men had been caught breaking into the Democrat’s HQ to plant a listening device. Woodward went to the courtroom the following day and noticed a prominent lawyer taking great interest in the case. What was he doing there? Woodward also learnt at the court that several of the men had worked for the Central Intelligence Agency. They were also carrying large amounts of cash on them when arrested and two of them had notebooks, inside one of which was a telephone number for a man who worked at the White House. From these slender – but promising – beginnings was launched a series of stories that were finally to prove the Nixon administration’s complicity in a whole raft of illegal activities. Bernstein and Woodward were fêted, wrote a best-selling book and a Hollywood film was made of their investigation. But that was the final outcome. Before that were a thousand frustrations, abuse from Nixon supporters and officials who feared and suspected their reporting, wasted days, weeks and months pursuing false leads, mistakes (some of which got into print), countless hours searching records for that one vital piece of information, selfdoubts, criticism and envy of colleagues, and late nights, all nights and weekends of their own time spent on the case. There are valuable lessons to be learnt from their experiences. Their book, All The President’s Men, is probably the best detailed description of reporting in the English language. It tells the story of two reporters edging slowly, and not always in a straight line, towards the truth by painstaking
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