Bob Woodward
Robert Upshur Woodward (born March 26, 1943) is an American investigative journalist. He started working for The Washington Post as a reporter in 1971 and now holds the title of associate editor.[1][2]
For other people named Robert Woodward, see Robert Woodward (disambiguation).
Bob Woodward
Journalist
Reporting on the Watergate scandal
2
- Alfred E. Woodward (father)
1965–1970
While a reporter for The Washington Post in 1972, Woodward teamed up with Carl Bernstein, and the two did much of the original news reporting on the Watergate scandal.[3] These scandals led to numerous government investigations and the eventual resignation of President Richard Nixon. The work of Woodward and Bernstein was called "maybe the single greatest reporting effort of all time" by longtime journalism figure Gene Roberts.[4]
Woodward continued to work for The Washington Post after his reporting on Watergate. He has written 21 books on American politics and current affairs, 14 of which have topped best-seller lists.
Woodward was born in Geneva, Illinois, the son of Jane (née Upshur) and Alfred E. Woodward, a lawyer who later became chief judge of the 18th Judicial Circuit Court. He was raised in nearby Wheaton, Illinois, and educated at Wheaton Community High School (WCHS), a public high school in the same town.[5] His parents divorced when he was twelve, and he and his brother and sister were raised by their father, who subsequently remarried.[6]
Following graduation from WCHS in 1961, Woodward enrolled in Yale University with a Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps (NROTC) scholarship and studied history and English literature. While at Yale, Woodward joined the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity and was a member of Book and Snake.[7][8] He received his B.A. degree in 1965.[9]
After Yale, Woodward began a five-year tour of duty in the United States Navy.[9] During his service in the Navy, Woodward served aboard the USS Wright, and was one of two officers assigned to move or handle nuclear launch codes the Wright carried in its capacity as a National Emergency Command Post Afloat (NECPA).[10] At one time, he was close to Admiral Robert O. Welander, being communications officer on the USS Fox under Welander's command.[11]
Criticism
Style
Woodward often uses unnamed sources in his reporting for the Post and in his books. Using extensive interviews with firsthand witnesses, documents, meeting notes, diaries, calendars, and other documentation, Woodward attempts to construct a seamless narrative of events, most often told through the eyes of the key participants.
Nicholas von Hoffman has made the criticism that "arrestingly irrelevant detail is [often] used",[50] while Michael Massing believes Woodward's books are "filled with long, at times tedious passages with no evident direction."[51]
Joan Didion published a comprehensive criticism of Woodward in a lengthy September 1996 essay in The New York Review of Books.[52] Though "Woodward is a widely trusted reporter, even an American icon", she says that he assembles reams of often irrelevant detail, fails to draw conclusions, and make judgments. "Measurable cerebral activity is virtually absent" from his books after Watergate from 1979 to 1996, she said. She said the books are notable for "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." She ridicules "fairness" as "a familiar newsroom piety, the excuse in practice for a good deal of autopilot reporting and lazy thinking." All this focus on what people said and thought—their "decent intentions"—circumscribes "possible discussion or speculation", resulting in what she called "political pornography".
The Post's Richard Harwood defended Woodward in a September 6, 1996, column, arguing that Woodward's method is that of a reporter—"talking to people you write about, checking and cross-checking their versions of contemporary history," and collecting documentary evidence in notes, letters, and records."[53]
Lecture circuit
As of 2008, Woodward was giving speeches on the "lecture circuit" to industry lobbying groups, such as the American Bankruptcy Institute, the National Association of Chain Drug Stores, and the Mortgage Bankers Association.[73] Woodward was commanding speaking fees "rang[ing] from $15,000 to $60,000" and donating them to his personal foundation, the Woodward Walsh Foundation, which donated to charities including Sidwell Friends School.[74] Washington Post policy prohibits "speaking engagements without permission from department heads" but Woodward insisted that the policy is "fuzzy and ambiguous".[75]
Woodward also lectures at colleges and universities. He gave the 2001 Robert C. Vance Distinguished Lecture at Central Connecticut State University,[76] and has spoken at the University of Arkansas,[77] University of Alabama,[78] Eastern Connecticut State University,[79] West Texas A&M University,[80] and Oklahoma City Community College.[81] Following the publication in 2018 of Fear: Trump in the White House, he spoke to an overflow crowd of students, faculty, and guests at Virginia Commonwealth University.[82] His May 4, 2019 speech at Kent State University contained the startling revelation of previously unreleased audiotape on which then-president Richard Nixon can be heard lauding the 1970 shooting of four students for its effect on those who disagreed with him.[83]
Personal life
Woodward has been married three times. His first marriage (1966–1969) was to his high school sweetheart Kathleen Middlekauff, now an English professor. His second marriage (1974–1979) was to Frances Kuper.[84] In 1989, he married for a third time to Elsa Walsh (b. August 25, 1957), a writer for The New Yorker and the author of Divided Lives: The Public and Private Struggles of Three American Women.[85]
His oldest daughter, Tali, is also a journalist. She directed a graduate program in journalism at Columbia University for six years before becoming an editor for The Trace.[86][87]
In popular culture
Woodward was portrayed by Robert Redford in All the President's Men (1976), J. T. Walsh in Wired (1989), Will Ferrell in Dick (1999), Julian Morris in Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House (2017), and Spencer Garrett in The Front Runner (2018). Redford's voice from All the President's Men, depicting Woodward's telephone call to Howard Hunt, was reused in episode 4 of the 2023 HBO miniseries, White House Plumbers, in depicting the call from Hunt's perspective.
Woodward has co-authored or authored 14 No. 1 national bestselling non-fiction books.[88]
Television
Woodward co-wrote the 1986 NBC made-for-TV film Under Siege about a series of terrorist attacks in the United States.[94][95] The film's other co-writers include Christian Williams, Richard Harwood, and Alfred Sole.
Woodward again collaborated with Williams when they were story writers for the 1989 TNT TV miniseries adaptation of The Nightmare Years about American journalist William L. Shirer stationed in pre-World War II Nazi Germany.[96] The miniseries' screenplay was written by Ian Curteis.