All the President's Men

All the President’s Men was a very powerful movie that really dug deep into the Watergate scandal which led to Nixon’s resignation. Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford played the role of two reporters working for the Washington Post. They were investigating the Watergate break-in and made some surprising discoveries. However, in order to make these discoveries and write their story, they had to make a lot of ethical judgments. Many things they did throughout the movie were very sketchy and unethical. But did the end justify the means?

The reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, did some sketchy activities in order to get the truth. One thing that is against the code of ethics is using unknown sources. They used many anonymous sources throughout their investigation including a source named “Deep Throat.” Reporter Bob Woodward would meet “Deep Throat” in dark parking garages which made the information seem even more sketchy, but that doesn’t mean that the information wasn’t true. In many cases though, it was important to keep these sources confidential because they were dealing with a huge national issue and the sources could be in danger if their names got out. But how are readers supposed to trust any of the stories if the sources were not named? The reporters had to deal with this and find other ways to get information from credible sources whose names they could reveal. The ways they went about finding people who were involved dealt with ethical dilemmas as well. The reporters were able to get a list of names and addresses of people that were involved by using one of their coworkers who was guilt tripped into doing it. Once they got the list, they tried to track everyone down. When the people wouldn’t talk to them or let them in, the reporters became very intrusive and sort of tricked the people into talking. Reporter Carl Bernstein came into a woman’s home and tried to get information from her by tricking her into questions. He was also very sneaky too by writing on napkins to remember all the information. He wrote down things she said without her even knowing about it. Now this kind of intrusiveness seems very unethical but it was the only way to get information because every witness was too scared to talk.

The reporters managed to get more information from one of the sources by tricking her again in order to learn someone’s name and verify what they knew. They wanted to know if P stood for the name Porter. They knew that she wouldn’t verify that information so they pretended that they already knew it and said it in front of her to see if she would correct them or deny it. When she didn’t deny the information, they knew that it was correct. They tricked her into verifying their information.

The reporters did many unethical activities in order to learn the truth. Is it wrong that they deceived people into getting information even though it was for the greater good? I definitely think that the end justified the means and the only way to find out the truth was to do sketchy activities. I do not think that it is right to deceive people but sometimes that it what you have to do in order to get the truth. The truth affected the entire nation and the American people deserved to know what happened with the Watergate scandal. People deserve to know the truth so the ends do justify the means.