I actually loved the scene with the White House librarian! I think that very well could have been the way things went down, but more than that, I loved how they played the scene. Hoffman's all flustered and excited and walks up to Redford, and as he's telling Redford about it, Redford's already writing the story in his head, and thinking to ask for a comment on why she would change her story. That scene just shows how well the two of them dance together on screen, and how they worked together as a team.
I don't think you need any backstory on these guys. The American public sure doesn't have a ton of backstory (though in today's age we can) for its journalists. You know what they write. And we as an audience know that Woodward had only been with the post a few months, and Bernstein had been there a while. Woodward was more buttoned-up, young guy who stuck more to the rules (the scenes of them debating what's fact and what's inference are fascinating), and was less willing to push boundaries, but was dogged in his fact-finding and super quick on his feet. Bernstein, on the other hand, while young, had been there for a while, was more of a free-wheeler (cared less about ironing his shirts), and was willing to blur ethical lines to get someone to open up for him - like when he was asking the secretary about her ex boyfriend, or the scene with the bookkeeper. He was willing to make people uncomfortable if it got him where he was going. Also, he was put on the case, not because he was the best, but because he had connections. And he was persistent. He was waiting outside the office when Woodward was called to cover the Watergate arraignment, and he spends that day in Florida to get the subpoena'd phone records. And he was a good writer. He knew how to write up a story so that it wasn't just telling the facts, it showed why it was important.
One other thing I noticed about the movie was that it sets up a lot of juxtapositions of TV news vs. print journalism. The movie opens on TV coverage of Nixon flying to the capitol to address a joint session of congress, and the news reporter is giving the dullest of live reporting about how the President is getting to and entering the capitol, and the movie ends with a scene of Woodward and Bernstein set up at their desks with mounds of paper around them, diligently typing away as Nixon takes the nomination for re-election. My sense is the movie is getting at the necessity of print and investigative journalism in a time when everything is on TV. That also resonates now in our time of "fake news." The Washington Post and the New York Times fought significant legal battles in the 70's and this movie shows maybe better than any other the importance of journalistic investigations of the government to shine the spotlight on, oh, the administration using the intelligence community to commit widespread actual spying on political opponents.
This probably is one of my top movies. I'm a politics nerd, which is why I moved to Washington, and I love investigations.. so this hits my sweet spot. But I also think it's important as a movie that I think really seemed to capture what it was like to get these mangled, loose threads of the investigation and put it all together. It's a factually dense movie with a lot of moving parts, and not much action, and maybe it's my own experiences at play, but I find it gripping when they're interviewing people to hear what they're going to say, and feel that excitement of not knowing whether the few people who know what happened are going to shut down on you. And, as a lawyer, people's memories get real hazy when you're trying to nail down facts and you have no 5th Amendment defense. Anyone who's seen a congressional testimony knows the "I don't recall" defense.
The last thing I'll say is how much I appreciate that they used accurate filming locations around town. I really enjoyed the sight seeing. So many movies are "based in" Washington, but you never get to see it. Anyway, much of this is rambling, but I'm just in love with this movie.