Comparing All The President's Men And The Watergate Scandal

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In the early 1970s the Watergate Scandal rocked America and eventually led to the resignation of Richard Nixon. The Washington Post assigned reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein to the incident, and through their investigative journalism, they traced the Watergate break-in back to Nixon. All the President’s Men showcases Woodward and Bernstein’s investigation of Watergate, whereas in The Final Days Woodward and Bernstein tell the story of the last days of the Nixon presidency. In All the President’s Men and The Final Days, Woodward and Bernstein use third person omniscient narration to show the investigation of the media and the lack of morality of the Nixon administration. When it first happened, the Watergate break-in manifested …show more content…

With everything recorded in the Oval Office, Woodward and Bernstein hoped to find incriminating evidence of Nixon’s involvement in the Watergate Scandal. Deep Throat also warned of “deliberate erasures” in one or more of the tapes by Nixon in order to cover up incriminating evidence against him. The narrator her displays the final stage of the Watergate scandal, the revelation of the tapes, and their erasures through their omniscient presence. This soon gained the attention of Congress. When subpoenaed by Congress, however, Nixon refused to give up the tapes to Congress, citing his “executive privilege” as president. This further shows the disintegrity of Nixon, as he tried to make up powers supposedly given to him by the Constitution to make himself more powerful than the rest of the government. Soon after his subpoena, a “smoking gun” tape of Nixon confessing to knowledge of the cover-up was presented before Congress, eventually leading to his resignation. After the entire investigation, Congress finally exposed Nixon’s corruption, along with the help of Woodward and Bernstein. The White House tapes ultimately played a large role in both Woodward’s and Bernstein’s investigation and the downfall of