The heroic-journalist myth of Watergate — the notion that dogged reporting by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein for the Washington Post brought down Richard Nixon's corrupt presidency — pops up often, and in the service of any number of objectives.
It is a tale of supposed high accomplishment inspiring to journalists, especially so at a time of sustained retrenchment in their field.
It's a trope with the intoxicating effect of placing journalists at the decisive center of an exceptional moment in U.S. history.
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