Deep Throat

Today, Woodward and Bernstein's infamous Watergate source was revealed (free registration required). W. Mark Felt, then second-in-charge at the FBI, proved to be the critical informant.

Coincidentally, or not, I watched Shattered Glass this evening. The film recounts fabricated stories at The New Republic, whose Chuck Lane had to manage the mess. Lane, of course, now covers the legal affairs beat for The Washington Post (free registration required). Good movie, incidentally. Worth watching.

Intriguingly, I just watched Network this weekend, too. The thought-provoking film - originally released in 1976 - fairly predicts the slovenly depths to which many of today's so-called "news" programs have fallen. You should check it out, if for nothing else than Peter Finch's inspiring performance as Howard Beale, who slings such zingers as this:

It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything.'