Woodward and Bernstein: Could the Web generation uncover a Watergate-type scandal? – The Washington Post

Yale journalism students say they could have easily broken the Watergate scandal themselves, simply by Googling for keywords.

“This is Yale,” Bernstein said gravely.

“That somehow the Internet was a magic lantern that lit up all events,” Woodward said. “And they went on to say the political environment would be so different that Nixon wouldn’t be believed, and bloggers and tweeters would be in a lather and Nixon would resign in a week or two weeks after Watergate.”

A small ballroom of journalists — which included The Washington Post’s top brass, past and present — chuckled or scoffed at the scenario.

“I have attempted to apply some corrective information to them,” Woodward continued, “but the basic point is: The truth of what goes on is not on the Internet. [The Internet] can supplement. It can help advance. But the truth resides with people. Human sources.”

Just as the U.S. government has been haunted by the specter of Watergate for the past four decades, the profession of journalism has never quite shaken the golden archetype of Woodward and Bernstein, the enterprising young Washington Post reporters who first got word of a break-in at the Democratic National Committee 40 years ago in June. —
Woodward and Bernstein: Could the Web generation uncover a Watergate-type scandal? – The Washington Post.