Kosár
“Fear” is an important book, not only because it raises serious questions about the president’s basic fitness for the office but also because of who the author is. Woodward’s dogged investigative reporting led to Nixon’s resignation. He has written or co-authored 18 books, 12 of them No. 1 bestsellers; broken other major stories as a reporter and associate editor of The Washington Post; and won two Pulitzer Prizes. His work has been factually unassailable. (His judgment is certainly not perfect, and he has been self-critical about his belief, based on reporting before the Iraq War, that there were weapons of mass destruction.)
During Watergate, Woodward and Bernstein were often alone on the story. Now, the din of daily disclosure and opinion is almost deafening. But what was important about Woodward’s meticulous reporting in the 1970s is even more invaluable today: His utter devotion to “just the facts” digging and his compulsively thorough interviews, preserved on tape for this book, make him a reliable narrator. In an age of “alternative facts” and corrosive tweets about “fake news,” Woodward is truth’s gold standard.
At a moment when social media and cable television are filled with journalists spouting invective about the White House and Trump blasts the press as “the enemy of the people,” Woodward has clung to old-fashioned notions of journalistic objectivity. “My job is not to take sides,” he told a Vox interviewer in March. “I think our job is not to love or loathe people we’re trying to explain and understand. It is to tell exactly what people have done, what it might mean, what drives them, and who they are.”
The Washington Post
