Ben Bradlee
Ben Bradlee
Benjamin Crowninshield "Ben" Bradleewas executive editor of The Washington Post from 1968 to 1991. He became a national figure during the presidency of Richard Nixon, when he challenged the federal government over the right to publish the Pentagon Papers and oversaw the publication of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's stories documenting the Watergate scandal. At his death he held the title of vice president at-large of the Post...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionJournalist
Date of Birth26 August 1921
CityBoston, MA
CountryUnited States of America
I don’t want to disappoint too many people, but the number of interesting political, historical conversations we had, you could stick in your ear, it wasn't that many. We talked about friends, family and of course girls.
As long as a journalist tells the truth, in conscience and fairness, it is not his job to worry about consequences. The truth is never as dangerous as a lie in the long run. I truly believe the truth sets men free.
Hire people smarter than you are and encourage them to bloom.
Everybody who talks to a newspaper has a motive. That's just a given. And good reporters always, repeat always, probe to find out what that motive is.
Generals who can write always make me nervous.
I do worry about how newspapers respond to falling circulation figures. I'm not sure that the answer is for newspapers to try to cater to whatever seems to be the fad of the day.
In the perfect world every source could be identified, but like the man said, "It's not a perfect world."
There will always be leaks; in Washington, everywhere.
It changes your life, the pursuit of truth, if you know that you have tried to find the truth and gone past the first apparent truth towards the real truth. It's very, it's very exciting.
It is my experience that most claims of national security are part of a campaign to avoid telling the truth.
It's very hard to stand up to the government which is saying that publication will threaten national security. People don't seem to realize that reporters and editors know something about national security and care deeply about it.
National security is a really big problem for journalists, because no journalist worth his salt wants to endanger the national security, but the law talks about anyone who endangers the security of the United States is going to go to jail. So, here you are, especially in the Pentagon. Some guy tells you something. He says that's a national security matter. Well, you're supposed to tremble and get scared and it never, almost never means the security of the national government. More likely to mean the security or the personal happiness of the guy who is telling you something.
As a child, one looks for compliments. As an adult, one looks for evidence of effectiveness.
News is the first draft of history.