"All the President's Men" was a warning

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“All the President’s Men” was a warning
Nearly 50 years later, the film feels less like a triumphant ode to journalism than a warning about media decay

By Coleman Spilde
Senior Writer
Published March 7, 2026 10:30AM (EST)


(Salon) In his June 1974 review of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s book, “All the President’s Men,” The New Yorker’s political columnist Richard H. Rovere was less than impressed. The book, which provided a detailed account of the journalistic process the two Washington Post reporters used to uncover the extent of the Watergate scandal, was primed to be a bestseller. For historians and rubbernecking readers alike, “All the President’s Men” would be a necessary tome, a how-to on exposing corruption. Rovere, on the other hand, found the book to be “barren of ideas and imagination,” and “scarcely more interesting or enlightening than the day-by-day newspaper accounts.” The authors were too hung up on facts over insights, he argued. This was not the gossipy publication that many anticipated, and to Rovere, that missing element made the book a disappointment. Thankfully for Rovere, director Alan J. Pakula would turn those humdrum parts of “All the President’s Men” into a gripping procedural just two years later, crafting a legendary piece of American cinema in the process.

But near the end of his column, Rovere emphasized one particularly important point in the book: Woodward and Bernstein wouldn’t have had anything to investigate if it weren’t for Nixon’s bumbling political cabinet and the sloppy work done by the low-level criminal team conducting the Watergate break-in. “Twenty years ago, McCarthyism might have been a grace and continuing menace to the liberty of us all if the leader had been less indolent and more hungry for power,” he wrote. “Two years ago, the triumph of the Watergate mentality might have become similarly disastrous if those who planned and executed it had not been almost wholly lacking in political finesse.”

If only that were still true. These days, America endures a Watergate-level amount of corruption every week, spearheaded by politicians as dolting and imbecilic as the ones in Nixon’s trusted circle. Federal immorality is no longer brushed under the rug, just waiting to be splashed across newspapers in big-scoop headlines; it’s scrawled out and published on X and Truth Social by the very politicians and talking heads committing it. Our government is rife with the exact kind of juicy insights that Rovere hoped to find in Woodward and Bernstein’s book, freely and fearlessly displayed. You can’t cover something up if you have nothing to hide.

Nearly 50 years after its theatrical release, Pakula’s “All the President’s Men” plays much differently than it once did. Despite its reputation as a rousing tribute to the value of journalistic process, all of the film’s finest, most impactful components have spoiled with time — and to no fault of anyone involved with the actual movie itself. The years have eroded the film’s relevance, sped up by pernicious politicians and unethical business practices that have all but made editorial institutions and the hope for a stable democratic government moot. Yet, watching the film all these years later, its ardent message of persistence is somehow all the more powerful. If Woodward and Bernstein can climb over every wall, turn over every stone and reroute themselves at every dead end, perhaps it’s not too late for some good, old-fashioned salvation. ................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2026/03/07/all-the-presidents-men-was-a-warning/