At about 10:30…

Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward reflect on their coverage of the Watergate break-ins and talk about the need for good reporting of national security issues and the White House today.

Imagine real reporting, if you can. It’s pretty rare these days, but it’s out there. But would people care, be attentive to it, or even recognize it if they saw it after being barraged by fake news, care of Fox? Or would the current ignorance and oblivion persist?

Here’s a link to the transcript:

BERNSTEIN: I think first you’ve got to be very careful about creating a witch hunt for sources, and a witch hunt in which you go after reporters, because now more than ever we need real reporting on this presidency, on national security, on all these areas. And the press is not the problem here.

We’ve got plenty of laws and if somebody inside is doing things with real national security secrets that he oughtn’t or she oughtn’t to be doing in terms of giving them to the press, that’s one thing. But let’s be really careful before we start a witch hunt here.

WOODWARD: Yes, and I completely agree with that. And by having an investigation, I mean, was there real harm to the national security? I think that question needs to be addressed at a policy level. And it’s very difficult, I know from doing stories like this, where you are dealing with sensitive government secrets, to modulate and be careful, at the same time hold the government accountable for what they’re doing.

So this is an area that needs to be handled with great delicacy and I’m not sure we have a political system that knows how to do anything with great delicacy.

BERNSTEIN: The record of the press, you know, is really quite good in protecting real genuine national security secrets which we often know about. Don’t put — you know, think of what you are carrying around in your head that you don’t put on the air…  I mean, we know a lot that we don’t put in there.