Ethics and Freedom

Bob Woodward probably hoped that the long holiday weekend would break the momentum of an uproar that suddenly confronted him midway through November. But three days after Thanksgiving, on NBC’s "Meet the Press," a question about the famed Washington Post reporter provoked anything but the customary adulation. "I think none of us can really understand Bob’s silence for two years about his own role...

Most of the hundreds of readers who wrote and called after my column on Bob Woodward ran last week said I was way too soft on him and on The Post. I think their concerns and questions deserve to be answered. One of those readers, Bob Woodward, thinks that some of his critics have "pigeonholed" him unfairly. "For 34 years of reporting for The Post and 13 best-selling books, I have tried to focus on...

Bob Woodward's recent actions bring a whole new meaning to the title, "All the President's Men." The veteran newsman for the Washington Post, who joined with Post reporter Carl Bernstein in investigating the Watergate coverup in the 1970s that brought down former President Richard Nixon, has gone from seeker of truth to concealer of truth. Woodward revealed last week he testified under oath to...

The case against Scooter Libby is up in the air, but the case against the press is solid. Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald indicted I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby Jr. on criminal charges, including obstruction of justice, making a false statement and perjury in the CIA leak investigation. The press indicted itself on grounds of coziness, self-interest and dishonesty. So far, Plamegate - the...

The recent revelations about the man often seen as the "moral hero" of the Watergate scandal, the Washington Post's Bob Woodward, have the feel of an interment ceremony. Reading press accounts of how Woodward swallowed the first Plame leak for a mere two-plus years without a peep and then went out on the Larry-King circuit to dismiss the significance of Plamegate, what came to mind was the burial...

The International Press Institute (IPI) has condemned the ongoing treatment of the magazine Cicero and its reporter Bruno Schirra by German authorities, and urged the German interior minister to suspend the prosecutions against the magazine and its reporter. In a letter to the German interior minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, the IPI urged the ministry and the prosecutor's office to issue new...

Even before the the actual megashow of the 36th IFFI began today, all the media persons, particularly the electronic media and the photographers, boycotted the press conference in the middle in protest against authorities deciding not to allow carrying of still camaras and mobile phones into Inox multiplex theatre complex to watch the films. The journalists, who thronged Goa to cover the mega...

What the heck's going on here? Bob Woodward -- the Bob Woodward -- is now making news instead of breaking it. The Washington Post's bigfoot reporter has made a cameo appearance as The Deposed in the ever-expanding Joe Wilson-Valerie Plame-Bob Novak-Scooter Libby-Judith Miller Follies written, directed and prosecuted by Pat Fitzgerald. Ziegfield never had such a cast, and now it includes an icon of...

Bob Woodward's journalism career has come a long way - from obscure police reporter to star of the Washington Post and one of the country's most recognizable journalists. Now the Watergate reporter whose stories brought down President Richard M. Nixon is tangled in a web of Washington journalists involved with the Bush administration's leak of Valerie Plame's secret identity as a CIA operative...

What the heck's going on? Bob Woodward - the Bob Woodward - is now making news instead of breaking it. The Washington Post's bigfoot reporter has made a cameo appearance as The Deposed in the ever-expanding Joe Wilson-Valerie Plame-Bob Novak-Scooter Libby-Judith Miller Follies written, directed and prosecuted by Pat Fitzgerald. Ziegfield never had such a cast, and now it includes an icon of...