How a reporting mistake nearly derailed the Watergate investigation — and how journalists recovered
Lessons from Watergate

...These errors, and Trump’s eager celebration of them, recall a crucial moment when a reporting blunder almost stymied the most important political investigation in American media history — Watergate. After The Post made an embarrassing mistake in an October 1972 story about powerful White House Chief of Staff H.R. “Bob” Haldeman, press secretary Ronald Ziegler spent a half hour angrily denouncing the newspaper on behalf of the Nixon administration.

At the time, the Watergate scandal was drawing closer to Nixon’s inner circle, and the error became an opportunity for Nixon’s team to try to derail The Post’s investigation into widespread misconduct by his administration and reelection campaign.

And it almost worked. But the Post was able to recover by quickly figuring out what went wrong, making sure its reporters were careful to avoid similar mistakes and refusing to be intimidated by White House threats. Today’s journalists would do well to remember these lessons. ...

As Trump and his associates have done with articles about the Russia investigation, Ziegler and other Nixon spokesmen regularly denied the allegations contained in the stories of Bernstein, Woodward and other reporters. Former Post city editor Barry Sussman explained in his book, “The Great Cover-Up: Nixon and the Scandal of Watergate,” that the Haldeman story gave Nixon’s associates a specific error they could attack. Bernstein and Woodward had misinterpreted what Sloan, the former campaign treasurer, had said and had relied on the confused answers of an FBI agent to falsely conclude that Sloan had testified about Haldeman before the grand jury.

Nixon’s men used the error to disparage all of the newspaper’s Watergate reporting. At his news briefing that day, Ziegler accused The Post of engaging in “shoddy and shabby” journalism and called the article a “blatant effort at character assassination.” Clark MacGregor, director of Nixon’s reelection effort, charged that The Post was “operating in close philosophical and strategic cooperation” with the campaign of Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern.

FBI Associate Director W. Mark Felt, who was later revealed to be The Post’s secret Watergate source known as “Deep Throat,” told Woodward that the error would damage the Watergate investigation. “You’ve got people feeling sorry for Haldeman,” Felt said. “I didn’t think that was possible.” ...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2017/12/20/how-a-reporting-mistake-nearly-derailed-the-watergate-investigation-and-how-journalists-recovered/?noredirect=on

...Mad Max: Fury Road director George Miller's Justice League: Mortal has become almost mythical to fans of comic book movies, with details dripping through since the film's cancellation back in 2009. Well, now Adam Brody, who was cast to play the Flash, has revealed a few more tidbits, as well as some background on what happened behind the scenes and the events that led to the film being pulled.

"It doesn't hurt, but I did realize how fantastic it could have been," Adam Brody said of the unfortunate cancellation of Justice League: Mortal. "I've said this before, but the script was very good. The draft I read was very good. Game-changing? No. Just very solid and very fulfilling. It had the perfect tone, I thought. It captured exactly what you want out of this movie, and everyone was cast fantastically for their roles."

Brody then elaborated on what was going on in the wider world of Hollywood and how this proved irrevocably detrimental to Justice League: Mortal. "Then, the writers' strike happened so they asked for this 'kitchen sink' draft because no one was going to be able to do rewrites for the foreseeable future," Brody added. "So, they're just like, 'Look, write every idea you have in this script. That's the one we'll go off, and then we'll pare it back.' So, we got there, and the script was 40 pages longer - and all for the worse. You pulled on too many threads, and it was a fair amount messier."

Related: Wikipedia Threatens to Delete Justice League Snyder Cut Page

This all sounds very sad indeed, but despite this Brody remained positive about how the film would have turned out, as well as heaping praise on the rest of the cast. "I'm sure we would've pared it back, and they would've figured it out because, again, it was already really good and done, I thought," he said. "So, we were working with a little bit more of an unwieldy script. Still, it was a very solid script, particularly to begin with, and the cast was aces. I was very excited to work withGeorge Miller, because he's a legend, but who knew? I didn't know that he hadn't even reached his peak. So, seeing Fury Road and seeing what a forward-thinking visionary he still is - it was just beautiful. It's a beautiful marriage of old-fashioned, streamlined storytelling with modern visuals and world building."

It sounds like audiences certainly lost out, but Brody continues his unwavering positivity about the whole experience. "Anyway, I still wouldn't say it hurt; it just made me realize, 'Oh, that Justice League movie actually would've been f-cking epic.' It didn't really even hurt much at the time to be perfectly honest with you; I wasn't crushed. I very much took it in stride. I also got the part fairly smoothly. So, it didn't feel like I got this big lottery ticket. I waltzed into it, and I waltzed out of it." ...

https://movieweb.com/justice-league-mortal-george-miller-adam-brody-remembers/