Politics & Power Quote by Bob Woodward

Woodward’s line lands with the cool authority of someone who has watched power up close and knows how the press quietly accommodates it. The phrasing is surgical: “hands-off policy” sounds like an ethical guideline, almost principled, but it’s really a euphemism for protection. He’s naming the soft corruption that doesn’t look like bribery - the wink-and-nod arrangement where scrutiny is selectively suspended for “favored politicians.”

The second sentence does the sharper work. By adding “generally very small newspapers or local TV stations,” Woodward isn’t just blaming the little guys; he’s tracing how pressure and proximity shape coverage. Local outlets often rely on the same officials for access, tips, and survival - in a small ecosystem, burning a source can mean burning your entire beat. “Generally” gives him plausible deniability while still sketching a recognizable pattern: civic boosterism masquerading as journalism, access journalism without the glamour.

The subtext is also a defense of mainstream, national investigative culture - the implicit claim that bigger institutions, with larger audiences and reputational stakes, are less likely to formalize favoritism. That’s debatable in an era of partisan media and algorithmic incentives, but Woodward is speaking from an older Washington-post-Watergate worldview where the press’s job is adversarial by default.

Context matters: as a journalist whose brand is document-heavy accountability reporting, Woodward is reminding audiences that neutrality isn’t the same as deference - and that the most dangerous bias can be the one that calls itself “hands-off.”