The Press and the Presidency

On Thursday, April 10, 2008, Wayne State University welcomed journalist and author Bob Woodward to campus for a special election-year appearance in the Forum of Contemporary Issues in Society. Woodward’s lecture, The Press and the Presidency, was in Community Arts Auditorium on campus.

Woodward, a reporter and editor at The Washington Post since 1971, has written or co-authored 10 New York Times #1 bestsellers – more than any other contemporary American writer. They include Shadow: Five Presidents and the Legacy of Watergate, The Agenda: Inside the Clinton White House, The Brethren: Inside the Supreme Court, The Final Days, All the President's Men, as well as three books on the Bush administration’s adventure in Iraq -- Plan of Attack, Bush at War, and, most recently, State of Denial: Bush at War Part III.

He also was the main reporter for The Post’s articles on the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2002. Woodward first gained popular attention while reporting with Post colleague Carl Bernstein on a 1972 break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington’s Watergate Hotel; their now-famous inquiry revealed a trail of political shenanigans that eventually brought down the presidency of Richard M. Nixon.

Woodward and Bernstein’s investigation was chronicled in the best-seller All The President’s Men, which was made into a film starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman.

In 2003, The Wall Street Journal called Woodward “the most celebrated journalist of our age.” Few if any Americans today are as well qualified to speak on the naturally symbiotic, often antagonistic, always mutually manipulative relationship between the press and the presidency.