In the film All the President's Men, the filmmakers do an excellent job of creating suspense in a story known by everyone, the story of the Watergate break-in and its aftermath. The heroes of the piece are the two Washington Post reporters, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, who broke the story. The question is raised as to the point at which the media "crosses the line" in its pursuit of the truth when issues of national security and public safety are involved and when an individual's right of privacy are concerned. The implication in the question is that such a line is crossed in this story. In fact, while the potential for such a crossing exists, the media as represented by these two reporters in the film are fully aware of that line and avoid crossing it.
The belief that a line had been crossed by the burglars and that national security might be involved should have developed early in this story, though the natural tendency on the part of these young reporters to disbelieve that such a story could be handed to them as it has been prevents them from seeing through to the conclusion earlier than they do. The reason why national security is evoked so early in a third-rate burglary is that several of the participants have CIA connections. The criminals themselves have no over-riding right of privacy as to their activities surrounding their crime. They abrogated that right by committing the crime in the first place. The issue becomes more and more centered not on the break-in itself but on the attempt to cover up the nature of the break-in, those higher-ups who may be involved, and whether or not the White House is involved. Most of the direct participants in the events have little expectation of a right of privacy. Even in those earlier times when public figures were treated differently than they are today, elected officials and their staffs could not expect to be treated with much deference and could not expect to have a ...