Ben Bradlee Quotes

Maybe some of today's papers have too many 'feel-good' features, but there is a lot of good news out there.

The first rough draft of history.

To hell with news! I'm no longer interested in news. I'm interested in causes. We don't print the truth. We don't pretend to print the truth. We print what people tell us. It's up to the public to decide what's true.

You never monkey with the truth.

In the perfect world every source could be identified, but like the man said, "It's not a perfect world."

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.

I think he had a strange, passionate devotion to the truth and a horror at what he saw going on.

The champagne was flowing like the Potomac in flood.

There will always be leaks; in Washington, everywhere.

The history of American politics is littered with bodies of people who took so pure a position that they had no clout at all.

Those [Watergate] tapes are going to take me to my grave with a huge smile on my face.

Generals who can write always make me nervous.

If an investigative reporter finds out that someone has been robbing the store, that may be 'gotcha' journalism, but it's also good journalism.

It is my experience that most claims of national security are part of a campaign to avoid telling the truth.

The biggest difference between Kennedy and Nixon, as far as the press is concerned, is simply this: Jack Kennedy really liked newspaper people and he really enjoyed sparring with journalists.

I never believed that Nixon could fully resurrect himself. And the proof of that was in the obits.

The Nixon administration really put a lot of pressure on CBS not to run the second broadcast.

Hire people smarter than you are and encourage them to bloom.

There is nothing like daily journalism! Best damn job in the world!

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.

Nothing's riding on this, except the First Amendment to the Constitution, freedom of the press and maybe the future of the country. Not that any of that matters, but if you guys f-k up again, I'm gonna get mad.

Sure, some journalists use anonymous sources just because they’re lazy, and I think editors ought to insist on more precise identification even if they remain anonymous.

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.

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.

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.

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 changes your life, the pursuit of truth.

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.

Sometimes I am convinced there is nothing wrong with this country that couldn't be cured by the magical implantation of ethical standards on us all - leaders and followers. Until that becomes doable, the Center for Public Integrity is just about the best thing we have going for us.