Washington Post confirms Felt was Deep Throat. So the Washington Post confirms it was Felt. What is inspiring is that they kept the secret all of these years and even as news broke about it they still refused to confirm until they were quite sure that it was ok to do so. That’s integrity. What seems useful to this modern age is whether anonymous sources are still useful and whether news organisations today have the same standards.
The story of Watergate is probably unknown to most people under 30 at this stage but they all seem to know what the big scandals have -gate appended on to them.
And now for the geeky angle on this: I would love to find out how many people bought All the Presidents Men as a direct result of this breaking news story. This leads me on to the idea that Amazon and other online stores should have a Google Zeitgeist style frontpage where people can buy merchandise based on today’s and this week’s main news stories. Of course I don’t think it could be fully automated like Google news in case Amazon sells something insensitive. Would have been funny but PR damaging if Robbie Coltrane’s “The Pope must Die” was for sale when JPII kicked his clogs.
So far All the Preisdents Men has not shown up in the top searchs in Isohunt.