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Variety has now posted their review of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and it contains much praise for the sixth installment in the Harry Potter film series. Noting that director David Yates "displays noticeably increased confidence here, injecting more real-world grit into what began eight years ago as purest child's fantas," and has made a film that is "film is clear-headed and clean-... Read the rest of this post

Just when you think you've seen it all, comes a whole host of new high res stills from the upcoming Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, notably of Alan Rickman as Severus Snape. As seen here, you can see Snape sitting at Spinners End, reading a copy of the Daily Prophet. New as well is this fascinating photo of a questioning Bellatrix Lestrange (Helena Bonham Carter) standing next to Snape ... Read the rest of this post

Earlier today TLC first told you about the new clip that was shown today from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince featuring Weasley Wheezes. Thanks to TLC reader Will we can see the clip here via Youtube, plus the portion of the show featuring James and Oliver Phelps (Fred and George) as it aired today on BBC's Blue Peter. Viewers in the UK can access the video via the BBC website here.

Than... Read the rest of this post

Donald Ritchie, author of Reporting from Washington: The History of the Washington Press Corps, Our Constitution, and The Congress of the United States: A Student Companion, looks at The New York Times decision not to break the Watergate story. Ritchie, who has been Associate Historian of the United States Senate for more than three decades, reveals that it was a series of mistakes, not just one, that led to The Washington Post breaking the story. Ritchie’s book, Reporting from Washington, was also ahead of the pack, identifying Deep Throat as being in the FBI months before Mark Felt confessed.

Watergate is back in the news thanks to the recent confessions of a former New York Times reporter, Robert M. Smith, and his Washington bureau editor, Robert H. Phelps, about how they failed to report a hot tip on the Nixon administration’s involvement in the cover-up. Preparing to leave the paper in August 1972, to attend law school, Smith held a farewell lunch with acting FBI director L. Patrick Gray, who revealed that his agents had found evidence of “dirty tricks” being employed by the Nixon reelection campaign, leading to the top levels. Smith reported this to Phelps, but he was leaving on a month-long vacation and let the story drop. The rest of the media has relished reporting on how the Times let the political story of the century slip away.

Of course, the rest of the media–with the notable exception of the Washington Post– fumbled the Watergate scandal as well. Even at the Post, the story was almost the exclusive property of two green reporters from the Metro section. Those who covered the national news dismissed the idea of presidential involvement in the Watergate burglary as being highly implausible. Washington correspondents may not have liked Richard Nixon, but they respected his intelligence and held it inconceivable that he would jeopardize his presidency by bugging his faltering opposition.

Without detracting from Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s assiduous reporting, we know now that their chief inside information was coming from the FBI’s deputy director, W. Mark Felt. He systematically leaked in order to prevent the White House from derailing the FBI’s investigation. The insights Felt provided the Post kept the story alive for months.

When the Watergate burglars were arraigned, it was initially seen as a local police story. Since the New York Times’ Washington bureau only covered federal courts, the Times buried a short report deep inside the next day’s paper, while the Washington Post put it on the front page. Max Frankel, the Times’ Washington bureau chief, discouraged his correspondents from pursing Watergate. “Not even my most cynical view of Nixon had allowed for his stupid behavior,” Frankel later lamented. It went on that way for the rest of 1972, with the Post running story after story, and the rest of the media sharing the Times’ reluctance. Further clouding the Washington bureau’s judgment was its condescending attitude toward the Washington Post, which the New Yorkers regarded as little more than a provincial paper in a government town–a step or two above Albany. Despite Woodward and Bernstein’s prodigious output during the summer of 1972, Frankel insisted that their reporting failed to measure up to his standards of reporting. Small wonder, then, that Robert Smith’s tip never made it into the “paper of record.”

The New York Times finally got a handle on Watergate when it hired the investigative reporter Seymour Hersh. In January 1973, Hersh scooped even Woodward and Bernstein by documenting how White House hush money had gone to the Watergate burglars. Reporters for other papers were developing their own leads and the rest of the pack piled on top. Ever since then–right up to the current revelations–Washington reporters have puzzled over why they missed the Watergate story for so long. The White House press corps came in for the harshest criticism, accused by former press secretary Bill Moyers of being “sheep with short attention spans.” But White House reporters, dependent on White House sources, were no more likely to uncover White House scandals than police reporters were to expose police graft. It took a couple of young, ambitious, local news reporters to think the unthinkable.

Video is now online of James and Oliver Phelps (Fred and George Weasley) at the announcement of the Harry Potter Exhibition that will be opening April 30, 2009 in Chicago. Thanks to the Fox station,who let us know about their photos and video of the announcement, as well as their interview with the twins, all of which you can see via this link.


As we first told you this morning, Harry Potter : T... Read the rest of this post

New scans from the German edition of the 2009 Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince calendar are now online. HarryPotterXperts let us know about new scans (available here in our galleries) which include a look at Luna (Evanna Lynch) and Harry (Dan Radcliffe) in their festive holiday attire for Slughorn's party.

Thanks Christian!