Bob Woodward

Robert Upshur "Bob" Woodward (born March 26, 1943) is one of the best-known journalists in the United States, thanks largely to his work in helping uncover the Watergate scandal of President Richard Nixon, in a historical journalistic partnership with Carl Bernstein, while working as a reporter for The Washington Post. He has written twelve best-selling nonfiction books and shared in two Pulitzer Prizes.

Style and commentary

In writing his books, Woodward collects detailed records including interviews, documents, transcripts, and recordings and uses them to describe events as a story with an omniscient narrator, present tense and dialogue. His books read somewhat like fiction and are often very visually descriptive.

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While this style may have earned Woodward commercial success, many literary critics consider his prose awkward and his approach inappropriate for his subject matter. Nicholas von Hoffman complained "the arrestingly irrelevant detail is used"http://www.nybooks.com/articles/8829 while Michael Massing thinks the books are "filled with long, at times tedious passages with no evident direction." http://www.nybooks.com/articles/3218 Joan Didion thinks Woodward finds " too insignificant for inclusion", including such details as shirts worn and food eaten in unimportant situations. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1423

Related Topics:
Nicholas von Hoffman - Michael Massing - Joan Didion

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The narrative, reporting-driven style of Woodward's books also draws criticism for rarely making conclusions or passing judgment on the characters and actions that he recounts in such detail. Joan Didion concluded that Woodward writes "books in which measurable cerebral activity is virtually absent" and finds the books marked by "a scrupulous passivity, an agreement to cover the story not as it is occurring but as it is presented, which is to say as it is manufactured." http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1423

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Some of Woodward's critics accuse him of abandoning critical inquiry to maintain his access to high-profile political actors. Anthony Lewis called the style "a trade in which the great grant access in return for glory." http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16050 and Christopher Hitchens has accused both Woodward and George F. Will of acting as "stenographer to the rich and powerful." http://www.salon.com/weekly/woodward960701.html

Related Topics:
Anthony Lewis - Christopher Hitchens - George F. Will

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Woodward has said that his books "really are self portraits, because I go to people and I say--I check them and I double check them but-?but who are you? What are you doing? Where do you fit in? What did you say? What did you feel?" http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1423 Critics complain that this style allows the biases and beliefs of his sources to steer the narrative and that those who talk to Woodward are painted more favorably than those who don't. The Brethren, for example, painted a picture of the Supreme Court based on the comments of its clerks and some believe that, as a result, the book offers a clerks-eye view of things where the Supreme Court Justices do little of the work. Brad DeLong claims that the accounts of the making of Clinton economic policy in Woodward's books The Agenda (from Clinton's view) and Maestro (from Alan Greenspan's) is so inconsistent that the reader will "collapse to the floor in helpless laughter".http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2004_archives/001257.html

Related Topics:
Brad DeLong - Alan Greenspan

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Woodward's dual role as newspaper journalist and book author has opened him up to occasional criticism for sitting on information for publication in a book, rather than presenting it sooner when it might affect the events at hand. In The Commanders (1991), for instance, he indicated that Colin Powell had opposed Operation Desert Storm, yet Woodward did not publish this fact before Congress voted on a war resolution, when it may have made a difference. And in Veil he indicates William Casey personally knew of arms sales to the contras but he did not reveal this until after the Congressional investigation.

Related Topics:
1991 - Colin Powell - Operation Desert Storm - William Casey

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Woodward has also been accused of exaggeration and fabrication by other journalists, most notably regarding Deep Throat, his famous Watergate informant. Before he was revealed to be top FBI official W. Mark Felt, some contended that Deep Throat was a composite character based on more than one Watergate source. Martin Dardis, the chief investigator for the Dade County State Attorney who in 1972 discovered that the money found on the Watergate burglars came from the Committee to Re-elect the President, has complained the book and movie misrepresented him. Woodward was also criticized for his deathbed interview with the now-deceased former CIA Director William J. Casey. Critics have said that Woodward's interview with Casey simply could not have taken place as written in the book Veil, and that he fabricated the scene. And an investigation by the New York Review of Books found that Woodward fabricated a sensational story about Justice Brennan in The Brethren, among other issues. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/7533

Related Topics:
Deep Throat - W. Mark Felt - Committee to Re-elect the President - CIA - William J. Casey - New York Review of Books

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Despite these criticisms and challenges, Woodward is praised as an authoritative and balanced journalist in the establishment press. The New York Times Book Review said in 2004 that "No reporter has more talent for getting Washington?s inside story and telling it cogently." The publication of a Woodward book, perhaps more than any other contemporary author's, is treated as a major political event that dominates national news for days.

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