"Many people have their reputations as reporters and analysts because they are on television, batting around conventional wisdom. A lot of these people have never reported a story"
About this Quote
Woodward is doing something more cutting than a media-vs-media gripe: he is policing the border between journalism as a craft and punditry as a performance. The jab lands because it’s aimed at a familiar TV ecology where authority is produced by repetition and proximity to the camera, not by the slow, unglamorous work of making calls, knocking on doors, and getting lied to until the truth cracks through.
The specific intent is gatekeeping in the best sense: defending reporting as the core legitimacy of political knowledge. “Batting around conventional wisdom” is an almost sportive phrase, and that’s the point. TV panels treat ideas like props in a game, keeping the ball in play, rarely risking a claim that can be disproven tomorrow by a document or a source. Woodward’s punchline - “never reported a story” - isn’t just an insult. It’s an accusation of counterfeit authority: analysis without exposure to reality-testing, reputations minted by airtime rather than evidence.
The subtext is also generational and institutional. Woodward comes out of an era when reporters built power by uncovering what the powerful wanted hidden; the Watergate mythology still shadows his name. In that context, television “analysis” looks like a substitute product: cheaper to make, safer for networks, and often friendlier to access journalism because it doesn’t require confronting sources. He’s warning that when commentary replaces reporting, the public loses not only information, but the mechanism that produces accountability.
The specific intent is gatekeeping in the best sense: defending reporting as the core legitimacy of political knowledge. “Batting around conventional wisdom” is an almost sportive phrase, and that’s the point. TV panels treat ideas like props in a game, keeping the ball in play, rarely risking a claim that can be disproven tomorrow by a document or a source. Woodward’s punchline - “never reported a story” - isn’t just an insult. It’s an accusation of counterfeit authority: analysis without exposure to reality-testing, reputations minted by airtime rather than evidence.
The subtext is also generational and institutional. Woodward comes out of an era when reporters built power by uncovering what the powerful wanted hidden; the Watergate mythology still shadows his name. In that context, television “analysis” looks like a substitute product: cheaper to make, safer for networks, and often friendlier to access journalism because it doesn’t require confronting sources. He’s warning that when commentary replaces reporting, the public loses not only information, but the mechanism that produces accountability.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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