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I finally did it—watched ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN. It's not just that all this has happened before, but that all the conversations we're having about how this is being covered and by whom and with what response from the White House and under what circumstances has happened before.
1/ You could take almost any line from ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN and apply it to some scenario we've seen, or controversy about what to cover and when (or who's "legitimate" enough to cover it), and the way false denials by the White House have made media (wrongly) fear it's wrong.
2/ It's not so surprising that I haven't seen ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN—as I don't work fulltime in journalism and it came out before I was born. But I can't imagine what excuse fulltime journalists have for not seeing that they're repeating many seventies' media-subculture errors.
3/ Some of the things I refer to are obvious—like the way competition between outlets was foregrounded or Woodward/Bernstein were derided as being the "wrong people" to be covering such a big story. But I also mean more subtle things in the film and the media culture of the time.
4/ Like Bradlee saying "you don't have it" to Woodward/Bernstein, which I bet some find sage but I find ridiculous as someone who teaches journalism. In a story so big, there's no "it"—*one* big story. There are 1,000 pieces that make up the "event." Get every piece right, first.
5/ As a viewer, perhaps unsurprisingly I find myself drawn to Bernstein most; he's exacting about the pieces, while Woodward devalues pieces until the whole ("it") is solid. It's inductive versus deductive, at least as portrayed in the film. I think the big truths are inductive.
