Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos’ dramatic decision to prohibit any perspectives contrary to “personal liberties and free markets” from the paper’s editorial pages has made another moment in the Post’s almost 150-year history all the more worth remembering. Almost 50 years ago, a group of high school students on a Post tour rushed across the newsroom to get photos with Robert Redford, who was researching his role as Post reporter Bob Woodward in the Oscar-winning film, “All the President’s Men.” They breezed right past the real Woodward without much interest, the Post reported.
The year was 1975. The movie was based on Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s bestseller about their investigation into the 1972 break-in of Democratic campaign offices and subsequent GOP coverup that ended the presidency of Richard M. Nixon.
In 2025, the Watergate story of presidential malfeasance, accountability and resignation seems a far-fetched, forgotten fairy tale. Witness a president convicted of 34 felony counts who seeks to destroy the FBI and Justice Department officials who investigated him. Donald J. Trump does so with U.S. Supreme Court-granted immunity from most actions he takes as president.
For those who know their history, it’s not just the deeds of the current president that seem otherworldly. It’s also the juxtaposition of journalistic icons like Washington Post publisher Katherine Graham and executive editor Ben Bradlee with not just Bezos, but with many other current media powers-that-be who are slouching away from their historic watchdog role. These include the New York Times, whose former columnist Paul Krugman accuses of “sane washing” Trump’s rhetoric, and CBS and ABC, whose parent companies have settled or, in the former case, are close to settling Trump lawsuits that challenge First Amendment rights. And Bezos’ new editorial outlook, widely criticized for seemingly nullifying the paper’s historic watchdog role, isn’t entirely surprising given how the billionaire Amazon CEO sat prominently with other tech entrepreneurs at Trump’s inauguration at the U.S. Capitol.
To be sure, many reporters for these and other organizations, such as ProPublica, are hard at work speaking truth to power while often facing hostility, threats and bodily harm from the president’s supporters. Yet, the erasure of public memory about the historic role of journalism in defending democracy is evident in record public distrust of media, students’ lack of awareness of journalism history, and corporate media’s free press amnesia as it capitulates to Trump in the courts.
In geographic terms, the inaugural scene of Trump and the tech titans was just three miles from the Watergate complex that gave name to the scandal. In public memory terms, this singular historical event seems three million miles away.
While adults of a certain age may well remember the Watergate scandal and the movie that mythologized Woodward and Bernstein, those memories, as Michael Schudson pointed out in his 1992 book, “Watergate in American Memory,” are mostly based on media representations. While the movie paints the Washington Post and its reporters as heroes, albeit bumbling ones at times, Schudson suggests that for Bradlee, a drive to beat the New York Times was a bigger motivation than preserving the Republic. That may be. But as a scholar of journalism and democracy and a former reporter for more than two decades, I can attest that it is entirely possible to be simultaneously dedicated to burying the competition and providing information people need to be free.
Now, more than 50 years after Watergate, this essay is consumed with Watergate in American amnesia. What if there is no enduring public memory of Watergate, glamorized, valorized or otherwise? What does it mean that there is little knowledge, much less consensus, about the past to help guide our understanding of today and help inform our future?
The book “All The President’s Men” debuted on the New York Times bestseller list in June 1974, remaining for more than 32 weeks. The movie, released in 1976, was nominated for eight Academy Awards, winning four. It was a political, cultural and journalistic phenomenon.
And now it’s ancient history, at best, to many young people. At least, if the reaction of my students in a recent undergraduate journalism history class is a reliable gauge.
“This is the first I’ve heard of this,” said one student as he learned about the reporting duo.
“All the President’s Men” isn’t a complete Watergate story. It diminishes the role of the FBI, Congressional investigators, White House whistleblowers and Justice Department lawyers, among others. It glamorizes journalism. It gives it unneeded extra credit. Even the set wasn’t completely authentic. Unlike at the Post, the newsroom replica had moveable pillars to enable better camera angles.
Now educators need to remove the pillars that block critical understanding of the role of journalism in society. This isn’t just a call for increased media literacy courses for all grade levels and ages, which is needed. It’s also a call for increased study of history, in both its traditional and entertainment media forms, along with critical analytical skills required to interpret these. It’s also a call for media companies to revisit their vital, historic responsibility and live up to it.
The students’ lack of visibility on Watergate is a good parallel for how far the Fourth Estate has fallen from its image in popular culture—and real life—as a defender of democracy, how ephemeral movie stardom can be, and how much even carefully constructed Oscar-winning memories lack reel—and real—staying power.
