PressEthic

I decided long ago I'd had enough of Bob Woodward.

It's more of a perpetual annoyance, like a dull nagging headache, though it seems near blasphemy when directed at the Watergate reporter. I wrote a column for my college paper (which I would link to if the Web site would let me. If you're interested, go to www.da.wvu.edu, click "Archives" and go to the April 22, 2004 opinion page) in which I wondered why Woodward takes all those exclusive, in-depth interviews and writes books instead of Washington Post articles.

But those were younger, more idealistic times...

One point in that column that still holds true is my first (and only) impression of him. As the keynote speaker of a Military Reporters and Editors conference I attended, Woodward's response to just about every question went something like, "It's in my book." I saw it as a deterioration of journalistic principles, and the smug banter of a salesman.

But he's still Bob Woodward, that brilliant investigative mind who broke the Watergate scandal with Carl Bernstein. He's a reporter first, right?

Eh. Woodward's name has just been added to the list of reporters to whom Valerie Plame was "outed." Not that his editors had any idea. Or, as Rem Rieder more astutely put it, his "nominal editors."

He tells yet another tale to the Village Voice.

It's convenient to downplay a scandal in which he is now known to have been involved. That's on top of his complete disregard for the Post hierarchy to which every other reporter must answer.

Then there are his books. "Bush At War," published in 2002, is an ode to Dubya's decisions in the Middle East. Does Woodward have a lax view on the leak because he was a part of it? Or, recalling Willem's blog questioning the Post's political slant, does he simply think the Bush administration can do no wrong?

Of course, none of these possibilities would negate the need to tell an editor. Maybe he just told his book agent instead.