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All the President's Men Essay example

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All the President's Men

The movie “All the President's Men” (1976), is based on the work of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein two Washington Post newspaper writers, who uncovered the cover-up of the White House's involvement in the Democratic Party National headquarters, Watergate, break-in. At first, Bob Woodward discovers what seems to be a minor break-in but is surprised to find that top lawyers were already on the defense case. He also discovers that names and addresses of Republican fund organizers were being accused, which further aroused his suspicions. When he brings this to the attention of the head of the Washington Post, he is prepared to run with the story and assigns Woodward and Carl Bernstein to it. Their findings of this …show more content…

The lists of people contacted by the two were those that worked for the re-election committee. They asked a Washington Post female co-worker to get them the office’s worker directory since she used to date one of the men that worked at the committee. They then took these workers phone numbers from the directory listing and called them up. This is unethical according to the theories listed in our book, first of they are using another’s past relation in order to get papers for them, and second they are intruding in these workers lives. The problem would not be that big if they just gave a call, but when they noticed no one answered their phones they actually went out and bombarded these people at their homes with questions, when the information they took were without permission in the first place. Their actions did not follow both Bok’s Model and Aristotle’s’ Golden Mean theories. One of Bok’s values on ethical issues is to have empathy for others, which Bernstein and Woodward didn’t have.
They both knew that the workers were being watched after a few tries of door knocking and that by them showing up and talking can cause these people to lose their jobs. They both still pursued on and didn’t care what would happen with those people. Aristotle’s’ Golden Mean of making the majority happy was also not applied. As they made these people more scared of what if they loose their jobs, and of intruding in

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