How the Washington Post changed journalism

The Watergate scandal of 1972 was not only a major eye-opener for America and a break in the trust put into the government, but also the beginning of a new era in journalism. The scandal centered around a break-in at the Democratic National Committee and the Nixon administration’s attempt to cover it up. Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s series of articles that followed the scandal exposed the truth to Americans and also sprung the world of journalism into a new code of ethics.

According to writer Daniel P. Finney of The Des Moines Register, Watergate is “a scandal that echoes in American culture four decades later [and has] dented Americans’ faith in their government.”

“I think that it made a more cynical country to where people really questioned their leaders,” government teacher John Feula states. While this is a sad fact that has tainted the image of the US government, there is one positive to come out of the scandal: investigative journalism.

Throughout the course of the Watergate scandal, Bernstein and Woodward did extensive research to deliver the honest truth to Americans. They flipped the script and focused more attention on the character and private lives of public figures, straying away from the sensationalism that was popular in the time period. Over the course of their series of articles on the event, Bernstein and Woodward dedicated themselves to digging up the truth and going to extreme lengths just to reveal to the public the honest truth.

Americans were shocked by the allegations that came out in the newspaper but somehow could not take their eyes away. The two reporters’ truthful timeline of stories fascinated the public and earned an unprecedented amount of respect for journalist.

“Woodward and Bernstein became superstars of the reporting world,” Feula says. “They made it so that a lot of young people wanted to go into investigative journalism.” In the time after the coverage of the Watergate scandal there was definitely a boom in journalism. According to the Washington Post, investigative journalism “has been steadily spreading around the world.”

The extensive research and fact checking that the two put into the story created a sense of morality in media and changed the role of media considerably from pure entertainment to a source of education for the public.