'Police Reporting' Exposed Watergate

The two Washington Post reporters who broke the Watergate scandal relied in their inquiries on "basic empirical police reporting techniques," Carl Bernstein, one of the two, said Sunday night.

"One of the lessons for the press in Watergate is that the old methods of reporting--police reporting, knocking on doors--work far better than taking prospective sources to lunch at French restaurants," Bernstein said.

Bernstein and his colleague, Bob Woodward, the two reporters cited in the 1973 Pulitzer Prize given to The Post for its Watergate coverage, addressed a capacity crowd at Jordan Hall in Boston for the Ford Hall Forum public lecture series.

Though Woodward said he believed the Post reporters' investigations had not interfered with individual liberties, Bernstein said that the lines of propriety are so fine that "unfortunately there are times when we overstep our bounds and cross over somebody's privacy."

Bernstein spoke out strongly against administration charges that the Post has used hearsay evidence and guilt by association in order to "convict" accused wrong-doers before they have gone to trial.

Bernstein said that because "we have had four years of hearsay" in news coming out of the White House, the media often has no choice but to report news items which might be considered hearsay if weighed in a courtroom.

"But the duties of the press are not the same as the duties of the court," Bernstein said, because the court's responsibility is "judicial" while the press need only be "judicious." The job of the press is to bring the most important facts to the attention of the public, he said.

Bernstein raised a laugh early in his speech when he told of his first conversation with convicted Watergate conspirator E. Howard Hunt the weekend after the Watergate break-in. Bernstein said he had made attempts to reach Hunt at several White House offices before finally reaching him at a building across the street from the White House. He asked Hunt why a notebook found in the possession of one of the burglars contained the words, "E. Hunt, W. House."

Hunt exclaimed, "Oh my God!" and hung up