Talk:All the President's Men (film)

Reagan Assassination Attempt

During the scene where Robert Redford (portraying Bob Woodward) leaves the parking garage, after a fast moving exiting car scares away Deep Throat, Woodward walks away from the parking garage and right through what appears to be the street and sidewalk near the T Street exit of the Washington Hilton Hotel.

While the location of the actual meeting with Deep Throat may be, and probably is, in a different location. The location of the filming of this event appears to be the same location as the Reagan assassination attempt by John Hinckley, Jr. on March 30, 1981.

If this is correct, perhaps an editor with good knowledge of this location could add a passage about this historical coincidence to the main article. After all, if the location is the same, then that means that the place where a film was done about the end of one U.S. Presidency was, five years later, the place where another U.S. Presidency almost ended as well.

72.82.179.96 23:45, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Deep Throat and W. Mark Felt

I've removed the name of Mark Felt from the cast, because at the time of the film the identity of Deep Throat was not known to anyone involved in it. Hal Holbrook was not playing Mark Felt but an anonymous informant. Also, it's known that his most famous line "follow the money" was invented for the film and was not part of anything Deep Throat said to Bob Woodward. Sam Blacketer 10:43, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as stub, and the rating on other projects was brought up to Stub class. BetacommandBot 15:03, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Original research

I've removed the following section from the main article as it was unsourced and is original research. --J.D. (talk) 21:19, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Ethical Dimensions

Sometimes this film is assigned in journalism ethics classes for the heavily-disputed ethical dilemma of using anonymous sources when they are central to the reporting of a story. Revealing the Watergate scandal in its entirety would have been impossible without the help of Deep Throat. Furthermore, much of the information gained from government officials was printed unattached to the name of its provider. To continue moving the investigation forward, the promise of anonymity had to be made, but outside of a case connected with high ups that rise all the way to the President, how can the use of anonymous sources be deemed necessary and ethical?

The use of unnamed sources usually occurs in light of extraordinary circumstances when no other way can be found disclose information to the public that is crucial to their well being. In addition, for most papers to quote or use anonymous sources, other requirements usually need to be met. In a letter sent out to all AP associated papers in 2005, Mike Silverman and Kathleen Carroll, AP Managing Editor and AP Executive Editor, respectively, reminded news staffs across the country that AP policies state anonymous sources are only to be used when the information provided is fact and not opinion; the information is not available unless anonymity can be provided; and the source is in a position to provide credible information. Furthermore, when anonymous sources are used, an explanation to the readers must be given to describe the reasoning behind using unnamed sources in order to prevent any damage to the reputation of journalism's credibility.

Even with these requirements, about one in four editors around the country said, in response to a survey done by the AP and the APME, that they won't use anonymous sources under any conditions because it promotes the use of incredible information. To escape the dagger of incredibility, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein used secondary sources to backup the information given by anonymous sources. This practice has become the benchmark in contemporary journalism in getting the okay from editors to use unnamed sources. Another practice that gives credibility to an anonymous source based information is inserting an appropriate and honest representative title to replace the name of the unnamed source--such as "a Senior Official said..."