In the film All the President’s Men starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman, shows a window into the lives of two Washington Post journalists investigating the emerging Watergate scandal and the trials they face in order to expose the truth. The film is wonderfully crafted and portraits the events in as true to life fashion as possible for a film, and like all great films it poses many questions for its audience. Questions such as whether or not the whistleblower Mark Felt, A.K.A. Deep throat, comes across as a hero or a villain in movie and whether or not dirty tactics used by politicians are harmful to the democratic process. These questions may simple, but just like scandal portrayed in movie, there is often a lot just below the surface. …show more content…
The lynch pin to this argument is that he did many of these shady things while uprooting governmental corruption. Some of the sketchy tactics he used, such as keeping his identity a secret were for justified reasons, such as the safety of himself as well as his loved ones and so that he could keep gathering information without being seen suspicious to his colleagues. Just as well, the argument that he had other less secretive options, while indeed true to some extent, were perhaps not the most effective or efficient. He had no way of knowing whether or not his superiors were in on it or whether or not it would even be handled correctly if they did help him. For these reasons it is completely understandable that he went strait to the press, which had the added effect of streamlining the available information directly to the people. These arguments are all well and good, but they don’t quite dispel the fact that what Felt did was, under United States, law criminal. However, law does not always make right. Though Felt may have had other methods that would have kept him clean in the eyes of the law, but he saw an opportunity to not just lift the lid, but blow it right of the scandal by leaking directly to the media. While breaking the law is not always justifiable, in cases such as this, it is safe to assume there are exceptions. Although his hands may not be squeaky clean, no one can deny in this situation Felt comes out the