Bob Woodward

Thursday

Zaid Jilani

Whither the whistleblower: leakers and leak-hunters get a boost from tech

When Americans think about the word “whistleblower,” their minds may go to the 1970s, when Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein began communicating with the informant who came to be known as Deep Throat, after the pornographic film of the same name (their source, a disgruntled FBI official called Mark Felt, outed himself decades later). But the history of whistleblowing in the United States predates Watergate by centuries. “Whistleblowing in this country is not new,” says Jackie Garrick, executive director at the whistleblower-support group Whistleblowers of America.

whistleblower

Tuesday

Mark Judge

The end of the Washington Post

The Washington Post is collapsing. Once one of America’s great media institutions, the paper lost $100 million last year and has shed 500,000 subscribers. Recent reports reveal that Post owner Jeff Bezos is going to be more hands-on to try and save the paper. Yet trying to get employees of the Post to do their jobs is like trying to get dogs to play baseball. Dogs just aren’t interested in baseball, and the breed of journalist now at the Post is just not interested in journalism. Always a liberal paper, the Post is now pure propaganda.

washington post

Thursday

Jacob Heilbrunn

Is Bob Woodward overrated?

In the final year of Donald Trump’s presidency, I went to an event at the AFI Silver Theater and Cultural Center in Washington’s Maryland suburbs. The occasion wasn’t a film but an evening with Bob Woodward. He talked about the lessons of Watergate and what it was like to chase down all, or at least most, of the president’s men. He was, however, pretty coy when it came to talking about the big reveals he would make in an upcoming book about the Trump presidency. “Follow the money,” he winked. He intimated that there would be big revelations about Trump and Russia. What they might be he never said. The reverential crowd of several hundred Washingtonians was ready to burn incense at his feet. But the oracle simply refused to deliver.

woodward

Friday

Roger Kimball

Leading vs lying

At his short Thursday news briefing, President Trump laid out the many successes that the United States has enjoyed in its battle against the Chinese virus compared with the record in Europe and other parts of the world. Trump’s decision to end air travel between China United States at the end of January was roundly derided as overkill and 'xenophobic' by the entire Democratic establishment from Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi on down. But that decision is now widely credited with saving tens of thousands of lives.

donald trump leading
bob woodward
Amber Duke

What the hell happened to Bob Woodward?

Famed reporter Bob Woodward is dropping his new book about President Trump, Rage, next week. Woodward has already leaked the book's juiciest excerpts to the media, such as the the President telling him during an interview on March 19 that he wanted to 'play down' the severity of the coronavirus in order to avoid a panic among the American people. This comment has led Trump's critics to call for his resignation or for him to be impeached a second time. Rage, however, is perhaps more revelatory about its author than its subject. Let's assume that the critics are right, and that Trump's decision to portray calm in the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic was wrong and cost thousands of lives.

Monday

Michael Tracey

Springtime for Woodward

It’s just as well that Bob Woodward’s latest exposé seems to have already faded into irrelevancy. The news cycle has briskly lunged forward to new outrages (real or perceived). His supposedly game-changing revelations have been left behind. Still, Woodward’s brief time in the limelight proved highly profitable. His dramatically titled Fear sold 1.1 million copies in just a week, and once again Woodward was bathed in cultural adulation. ‘Seriously Bob, you seem to outdo yourself every time,’ swooned ‘Morning’ Joe Scarborough, as if expressing gratitude on behalf of the collective punditocracy.

bob woodward