On Watching Stupid Watchers Watch Their Watchdog Movie – by Travis Mateer

It’s been very painful for me to watch The Pulp attempt to be a relevant local media outlet in Missoula and their most recent piece (6 days old), Watching the Watchdogs, highlights why I think The Pulp is the opposite of a relevant local media outlet. Let’s take a look!

Even though it was an “old” movie when I was in high school, All the President’s Men was one of the primary reasons I was inspired to write for the Hellgate High School newspaper, The Lance, and aspired, one day, to be a journalist. The 1976 film based on a 1974 non-fiction book tells the true story of the Watergate scandal and the two Washington Post reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who broke the story. It features some great power acting from Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman and it was nominated for eight Academy Awards — and it continues to be a classic journalism movie, which is why The Pulp is sponsoring a screening of it at The Roxy on Tuesday.

Why does Erika Fredrickson assume Woodward and Bernstein told the TRUE STORY about Watergate? She has to, that’s why. If Erika Fredrickson actually questioned official historical narratives, like the actual journalistic pedigree of of Bob Woodard, she might come away with a VERY different understanding of how power works in America.

For a counterpoint to Erika’s regurgitation of the official Nixon narrative, here’s Tucker from two years ago shit-talking Bob’s role by suggesting he was more CIA asset than real journalist.

“He wasn’t a journalist,” Carlson said about the most celebrated journalist of the modern age Thursday night on “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”

“Who exactly was Bob Woodward? Well, he wasn’t a journalist,” Carlson continued. “Bob Woodward had no background whatsoever in the news business. Instead, Bob Woodward came directly from the classified areas of the federal government. Shortly before Watergate, Woodward was a naval officer at the Pentagon.”

It’s true that Woodward joined the Washington Post straight out of the Navy – in a two-week trial as a cub reporter. He failed that trial, and spent a year working at the D.C. suburbs weekly Montgomery Sentinel before he would get another shot over at the Post. (Woodward did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.)

Another great indicator that Erika is one of those “journalists” incapable of updating her internal software to adapt to the times is her continued focus on Trump while the rest of country realizes just how manipulated they were regarding President Joe Biden. And who manipulated them? The entire media establishment, that’s who.

Instead of reflecting on just WHY journalists are now more despised than Congress, we get this:

Looking back, I realize it wasn’t just the drama that stuck with me, it was the quiet persistence of journalism. The hours spent combing through records, the seemingly dead-end phone calls, the painstaking process of fact-checking. It was definitely intriguing and easy to romanticize, but the film didn’t portray journalism as glamorous, per se. It did, however, portray it as essential. Watching Woodward and Bernstein methodically build a case — source by source, document by document — felt like witnessing truth slowly emerge from darkness. That kind of reporting takes time and guts, and that’s true now, as well, especially in a world where news breaks in seconds and misinformation spreads faster than facts. Case in point: Contemporary journalists investigating the Trump administration’s actions — ranging from alleged ties to foreign powers, to the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, to today’s aggressive, Constitution-flouting immigration crackdown — have had to rely on confidential sources and push past institutional resistance. 

Americans were treated to 4 years of gaslighting by national media as local media got gutted by corporate boardrooms, and we’re NOT going to forget it any time soon. We truly are at a crossroads as a country, but if journalists think they can coverup a senile president who has access to nuclear weapons, then just move on like it’s business as usual, well, they are worse than retarded. They are unwitting assets in a vile information war that most Americans don’t have the time or energy to deal with, so they just stop paying attention.

Here’s how the local idiots romanticizing their abysmal failure think of themselves and their craft. Try not to vomit in your own mouth after reading this shit:

And, for me, All the President’s Men offers both a warning and a guidepost no matter where you live and no matter where you are on the political spectrum. The film’s resonance suggests that even though tools may change, the investigative journalist’s mission remains steadfast: follow the facts, protect the sources, tell the truth, etc.

All the President’s Men is high-stakes political intrigue on a national scale. But what the film gets right, and what translates perfectly to a community paper, is the journalism process. That kind of relentless curiosity and willingness to dig. We are big fans of those things at The Pulp, which is why we want to share this film with you whether you’ve seen it many times or never. See you there?

No, Erika, you will NOT see me there because I’m doing what you’re just pretending to do. So go ahead and watch your little movie and keep pretending you’re speaking truth to power. It’s adorable.

Thanks for reading!

UPDATE: this post momentarily had the quotes removed by the shitty app I use to edit my posts on the fly.