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On Jan. 10, 2022, a picture was shared to the r/Damnthatsinteresting subreddit on Reddit that purported to show Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein watching former U.S. President Richard Nixon resign on live television. God bless great journalism and great journalists, the thread's caption read. It may have been posted due to the release of Bernstein's book, Chasing History, which came out the same month. The New York Times hailed it as a rollicking memoir about the golden age of newspapers. Woodward and Bernstein are best known for their investigative reporting for The Washington Post on the subject of the Watergate scandal. They filed their first story on the matter in 1972. The image caption below in the viral post says: After the White House claimed for more than a year that Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were making up stories and creating fictional sources, here they are watching President Richard Nixon resign on television. In truth, this photograph did not show the two men watching Nixon resign. Similar captions that have been posted to Reddit many times in the past were not factually accurate. So when was the picture shot? On April 29, 2018, presidential historian Michael Beschloss tweeted a high-quality version of the uncredited photograph. His tweet was correctly captioned with the following: Woodward and Bernstein watch Nixon’s first TV speech on Watergate, firing Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and Dean--45 years ago tomorrow night. Bernstein was sitting in the chair, and Woodward was seated on the floor. The caption from Beschloss' tweet referred to April 30, 1973, when Nixon gave his first live televised speech on the Watergate scandal. A gold curtain can be seen behind him both in the photograph and a YouTube video that showed the remarks from that evening: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvFsLXLVE-c It wasn't until more than a year later, on Aug. 8, 1974, when Nixon delivered his resignation speech on live television. A blue curtain was visible behind him for the 1974 remarks, which differed from the gold curtain seen in the picture of Woodward and Bernstein: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_e9Ot63lSiw While the photograph shared to Reddit did not show Nixon resigning, it's true that the two men were both at The Washington Post's offices when the former president made the announcement. In fact, the setting may have been similar to when they watched the April 1973 speech. We know this because, in July 2014, Woodward and Bernstein reflected on Nixon's resignation after 40 years, as did a former reporter for the New Yorker, Elizabeth Drew. Bernstein recalled that Katharine Graham, then-publisher of The Washington Post, told them that there should be no gloating that night. Referring to the evening of Aug. 8, 1974, he said: Woodward recalled specific details about the evening in August 1974, including the fact that they had been given bologna sandwiches and that he was sitting on the floor, just as he had done for the previous speech that appeared in the 1973 photograph: Questions and answers from the same panel were available on The Washington Post's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVXEX75APcA In 1976, the efforts made by the two reporters appeared on the big screen in the film, All the President's Men. Robert Redford played Woodward, and Dustin Hoffman portrayed Bernstein. In sum, no, the photograph of Woodward and Bernstein watching Nixon on television was not shot when the president announced his resignation in August 1974. The picture was taken in April 1973 during the former president's first televised speech on the Watergate scandal.
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