Journalism's golden boy lost a bit of his luster last week when revelations brought him to the forefront of the CIA leak investigation engulfing the White House.
Bob Woodward, managing editor of "Deep Throat" fame at the Washington Post, provided sworn testimony to Patrick Fitzgerald's special investigation that identified people in the Bush administration who leaked the name of Valerie Plame. In discovering that Woodward was told information about Plame, the journalist again finds himself in the position of keeping powerful secrets. What's worse is that he claims he withheld the information to use in his next book, and to avoid subpoena.
But he's come full circle from his Watergate days. Unlike his Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting that exposed rampant criminalities in Nixon's corrupt administration, his role in the CIA leak scandal shows his position within the status quo. Woodward's no longer in the business of exposing governmental misconduct, but in selling books at his newspaper's expense.
Woodward's bombshell disclosure seems to make him the first member of the press to receive the leaked information pertaining to Plame. Unlike Bob Novak, Woodward should be applauded for not exposing Plame's status within the CIA in his paper, but he doesn't have many bylines anyway and has clearly breached his role in informing the public of government malfeasance.
Woodward has compromised his role as a Post editor because his first allegiance was to the book he was writing and not the Post's readership. Unfortunate events like these are what lead to the public's distrust of mainstream media. Woodward should go back to what made him successful in the first place, exposing misconduct, not keeping it hidden.
