So often in recent coverage of the Donald Trump White House, the Watergate scandal is invoked as a point of comparison. (In fact, according to the media monitoring service TVEyes, the word “Watergate” was mentioned a combined 710 times in the past two weeks on CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC.)
But one of the pioneering journalists of the Watergate era thinks that reporters in the Trump era are doing it wrong.
At a forum hosted by Axios, legendary Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward believes that the media has been, at times, smug. And as a result, he thinks that people might have trouble believing otherwise credible reporting because they question the journalist’s objectivity.
“I worry, I worry for the business, for the perception of the business, not just Trump supporters, they see that smugness,” Woodward said. He added, “I think you can ride both horses, intensive inquiry, investigation, not letting up…at the same time, realize that it’s not our job to do an editorial on this.”
Woodward points to television as being more of a culprit than print in the smugness department.
“I think that’s a giant problem,” Woodward said. “On television, particularly, you will see a White House correspondent deliver a report and then say ‘The Trump White House said,’ and then there’s a kind of smug smile — which is the correspondent undermining what the White House said. And there may be grounds for that. But it should be reported. It should be straight.”
Watch above, via CSPAN2.
[featured image via screengrab]
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