"It's not all new, this stuff: Nixon, among others, gave it a try. His downfall was made possible, in part, by two Washington Post reporters, their editors, and their publisher, at a time when two-thirds of the country, according to Gallup polls, expressed a "great" or "fair to good" amount of trust in the media. In that era, a movie-two of Redford's finest hours-could lionize free-press crusaders with the full faith and credit of a mass audience."
"Redford's Wildwood Enterprises, Inc., which he co-founded, produced the film version of the bestselling nonfiction account "All the President's Men" in 1975 with Warner Bros. distributing. The studio thought, well, prestige flop, if we're lucky. Where's the money in a gabby tale of gabby men, even if they're played by Redford and Dustin Hoffman, typing and dialing? Everywhere, as it turned out."
Robert Redford combined cinematic craft and civic commitment to champion the role of a free press. He lived 89 years and witnessed mass media's profitable golden age and its current, more dangerous phase marked by weakened institutional checks. The nation now faces an ominous condition with insufficient investigative reporting into an administration experimenting with democratic norms. Historical precedent shows watchdog journalism can topple abuses of power, as reporting helped expose Nixon. Redford's Wildwood Enterprises produced the film All the President's Men in 1975, turning a complex true story into a commercially successful, mythologized celebration of investigative journalism.
Read at Roger Ebert
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