November 8, 2005: Village Voice Reporter Accuses Woodward of Becoming Washington Insider in Plame Wilson Reporting

The Village Voice’s Sydney Schanberg castigates Washington Post reporter and managing editor Bob Woodward for his behavior in the Plame Wilson investigation. Schanberg is referring to Woodward’s repeated attacks on the investigation and his support for the Bush administration (see December 1, 2004, July 7, 2005, July 11, 2005, July 17, 2005, July 31, 2005, and October 27, 2005). He is as yet unaware of Woodward’s status as a recipient of the Valerie Plame Wilson identity leak (see June 13, 2003 and November 14, 2005). Woodward is a rightful icon of investigative journalism due to “the groundbreaking shoe-leather reporting he and Carl Bernstein did on the Watergate scandal in 1972” (see June 15, 1974). Now, though, Schanberg writes, he has become just another well-connected Washington insider. “Doesn’t Woodward remember the reaction by many in the White House press corps, who initially sneered at the [Watergate] story and brushed it off as the fevered product of two lowly cityside reporters covering crime and the courts—which is what Woodward and Bernstein were at the time? I wish I were wrong, but to me Woodward sounds as if he has come a long way from those shoe-leather days—and maybe on a path that does not become him. He sounds, I think, like those detractors in 1972, as they pooh-poohed the scandal that unraveled the Nixon presidency—the scandal that Woodward and Bernstein doggedly uncovered.” Schanberg believes that Woodward has sacrificed his independence and his aggressive stance as an investigator in order to receive the unprecedented access to the White House and other Washington governmental agencies that he enjoys as a high-profile political author. “Critics in the press have suggested that Woodward is too close to some of his sources to provide readers with an undiluted picture of their activities,” Schanberg notes. “His remarks about the Fitzgerald investigation convey the attitude of a sometime insider reluctant to offend—and that is hardly a definition of what a serious, independent reporter is supposed to be. It’s a far piece from Watergate.” [Village Voice, 11/8/2005]