Carl Bernstein once brought down Richard Nixon – now he mourns the good old days of journalism

In the culture storm in the USA, legends are currently being tipped off their pedestals in rows: former civil war generals, presidents or Christopher Columbus. In January 2022 Thomas Jefferson got it, more precisely his statue in front of the Museum of Natural History in New York. An old, white journalist legend has so far been spared this fate: Carl Bernstein, who uncovered the Watergate affair involving Richard Nixon in the early 1970s together with Bob Woodward.

It could have hit the bon vivant and lover – including Elizabeth Taylor and Bianca Jagger – from a #MeToo point of view, for example. In 1979 he had an extramarital affair with the daughter of a British prime minister, even though his wife Nora Ephron was expecting their second child. The affair led to a divorce, all of which is well documented in Ephron’s later filmed book Heartburn.

A newsboy in the “glorious chaos”

But Bernstein was spared. Anyone who forced Republican President Nixon, who is still hated by Democrats, to resign remains untouchable. Unlike Bob Woodward, who writes books about Donald Trump and still comes up with insider scoops to this day, Bernstein’s media influence since the Watergate affair has been manageable, although he also writes books and was a correspondent for various TV stations.

But the nimbus of Watergate hovers around the investigative journalist to this day. And so Bernstein can continue to reminisce about bygone eras of journalism, these days thanks to his memoir “Chasing History: A Kid in the Newsroom”, which revolves around his apprenticeship at the Washington Star – a newspaper that went bankrupt in 1981.

The media world that Bernstein describes in “Chasing History” is chaotic – a “glorious chaos” obscured by the wisps of cartons of smoked Pall Mall and Parliament cigarettes wafting through the newsroom, past half-empty bourbon glasses. Bernstein began his career as a journalist as a “copy boy”, rushing from the reporters with carbon paper copies to the editors, who had the articles edited and typeset. He describes how the printing machines roll up on the ground floor of the newspaper “factory” and how the floors above with the editorial office tremble gently, so that even the most convinced digital reader becomes nostalgic – so nostalgic that one easily forgets the question of which lessons Bernstein’s story for today’s journalism.

Often heard advice

Unfortunately not many, one might think when listening to Bernstein do a live interview for Washington Post subscribers. Admittedly, that the first trail of a story is often misleading, that reporters shouldn’t be desk clerks but should work on their sources in the real world is advice worth considering, if often heard.

Even on current questions, Bernstein hardly provided any answers other than personal regret. What, he was asked, can be done about journalism with an ideological thrust? How can the “confirmation bias” be overcome, i.e. the self-affirmation tendency within media filter bubbles? And how can one prevent the degradation of readers to click-suppliers and their division into interest groups?

This left the impression that nostalgia was being sought here in order to keep the myth of the good old press alive. Legends like Carl Bernstein seem to be chasing after a long-gone journalism in order to erect a monument to themselves. If that doesn’t bother you, don’t let that stop you from reading «Chasing History».

Carl Bernstein, Chasing History: A Kid in the Newsroom. Henry Holt, 2022.