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====== Errors in fact ======

One scene in the movie that never happened in real life is the scene where Bernstein lures Dardis’ receptionist away with a fake phone call in order to speak to Dardis. It is said that this scene is not found in Woodward and Bernstein’s book. http://mentalfloss.com/article/78307/13-investigative-facts-about-all-presidents-men,. - Courtlyn Plunkett

Though this does not go against that accuracy of the story, many claim that Bernstein and Woodward were not ahead of this investigative train the entire time. The government and others were uncovering the trail as well.
https://www.realclearhistory.com/2013/04/26/how_true_was_039all_the_president039s_men039_4149.html

Howard Simons was the managing editor of the Washington Post during the Watergate scandal. According to the New York Times he was an aggressive and outspoken reporter and one of the people who supported Woodward and Bernstein throughout their entire story.
In the movie, Simons is shown as almost passive when dealing with the Watergate story. And his real life personality traits appear to have been given to Rosenfelt.
https://nixonscandal.wordpress.com/differences-and-similarities/differences/ -- Lindsey Sowers

According to the Washington Post, the movie left out important people that were involved in the events. It explained that the absence of the City Editor Barry Sussman was missed. Sussman played an important role in helping Woodward and Bernstein “piece their discoveries into a meaningful pattern but was entirely written out of the film, just as if he never existed.”  https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/watergate/stories/ringle.htm
-Amiti Colson
====== Things the Movie got right ======

A lot of the WaPo editors played themselves in the movie.  John McMartin, Foreign Editor, Paul Lambert, National Editor, Basel Hoffman and Stanley Bennett Clay were both Assistant Metro Editors. --Andrew Mullins

The movie used the actual names of the Watergate burglars along with Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward's real names of investigative journalists who wrote about Watergate. --Caroline Collier

The scene where Bob Woodward made a phone call to Kenneth Dahlberg where Dahlberg ends the conversation saying that his neighbor's wife had been kidnapped recently had really happened. It occurred on July 27, 1972, in Minnesota a few days before Bob Woodward called Dahlberg. -Kyle Moore

The film accurately portrays Woodward’s meetings with “Deep Throat” by showing the secret meetings in a parking garage as well as placing a flag in a flower pot to signal meetings. – Courtlyn Plunkett

The film did use actual names presented in this part of history. The burglars names were all accurate. -- Lindsey Sowers 

One thing I noticed about this movie is that the cinematography is kind of bland. There’s not a lot of eye-catching imagery and I think that’s because the movie is pushed along by the acting and story alone. There’s a lot of talking on the phone and images of newspaper articles but the movie is still very entertaining. The phone interviews added a lot to the movie despite only seeing one person in the conversation and hearing the other. There’s a lot of emotion in their voices that help move the story along and allow the viewer to understand the thoughts and feelings of the people who were involved in Watergate. It also shows the tumultuous process of investigative journalism. The movie does a great job keeping to the facts and presenting the story of Watergate in chronological order. –Lake Wiley

I liked how the film used actual television footage from the time during many scenes. It showed how the Nixon administration responded to what the Washington Post journalists were doing and made the events shown in the movie feel more significant and real. - Sam Hartz
====== Questions about interpretation ======
What I am finding about this movie is that it is in general rather historically accurate given that it was based off the book by the two journalists themselves and was also created so shortly after the events taking place occurred but I wonder if this same pro of the story being written by the two men involved could also be considered a detriment at all to the movie/story's accuracy. Is their account the most accurate version of what happened or are things dramatized or changed, etc? -Erin Andrewlevich
====== The movie as a primary source of its time ======


As the Watergate scandal happened four years prior to the release of the movie, the movie is entirely focused on the investigation part of the Watergate Scandal and never shows the results other than the headlines it created. As audiences lived through the consequences of the investigation themselves, focusing on the process of the investigation was probably more important to audiences.  -Kyle Moore

The movie came out only four years after Watergate and displayed the story of Watergate very accurately. In fact, the Library of Congress selected the movie for preservation for being ‘culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant.’ The editor of the Washington Post was devoted to ensuring that the film portrayed the story accurately because he wanted to show that newspapers were ethical and honest institutions that were out to find the truth.-Lake Wiley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_the_President%27s_Men_(film)

All the President's Men came out in April of 1976, as the United States was deep into the Democratic Party primaries ahead of the November general election. This was the first Presidential election since Nixon had been reelected, and the first one since the Watergate scandal upended American politics. This movie serves as a good primary source for it's time because it is clearly intended for an audience deeply familiar with the scandal and aftermath, and it's release coincides with the Democrats "Washington outsider" candidate Jimmy Carter gaining traction and steam towards his eventual nomination. At one point in the film Woodward and Bernstein repeatedly state that everybody was in on what the Committee to Re-elect the President was doing, the entirety of the intelligence community. I think that reflects the general lack of trust that the entire country had at the time towards Washington institutions, the same distrust that would lead them to nominate and elect Jimmy Carter as their next president. - Sam Hartz

It’s interesting that this movie came out in a time when everyone was probably tired of hearing about Watergate, it had just happened. Bernstein and Woodward were still active, they were fresh and able to give direct advice on the movie itself, even though it’s been said that they were hesitant to participate in the film. Redford emphasized that the movie was about those two guys themselves, that their story on unfolding the bigger story was the movie. It’s great that Redford went after this film, that he told the story of Watergate within the same decade it happened. Even though it was still fresh in people’s mind of the time, it allowed for them to see further insight into the events that took place and to gain a greater understanding of the backroom scandals that politicians can involve themselves and their country in. There’s an article online by the Washingtonian that recites interviews from Redford, Hoffman, Bernstein and Woodward, and various other major people involved in the events and the film. It goes into the backstory on the production of the film and the major characters’ thoughts on it during the time it was filmed. https://www.washingtonian.com/2016/04/03/all-the-presidents-men-movie-oral-history/ 
-Amiti Colson
====== Comparing the reading to the movie ======

====== The "So, what?" question ======

The time frame between Watergate and when this movie came out is very interesting I think; Nixon resigned less than two years before this film was released in theaters. All the President's Men shows the power that journalism and a free press have in this country. Two men helped to check the power of the President of the United States when our other institutions failed, and I think it was an important message to tell to a nation that was probably feeling at the time pretty helpless and concerned about what the future would hold. - Sam Hartz