The Nixon administration really put a lot of pressure on CBS not to run the second broadcast.
BEN BRADLEEAs a child, one looks for compliments. As an adult, one looks for evidence of effectiveness.
More Ben Bradlee Quotes
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The first rough draft of history.
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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.
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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.
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It changes your life, the pursuit of truth.
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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.
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As a child, one looks for compliments. As an adult, one looks for evidence of effectiveness.
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The history of American politics is littered with bodies of people who took so pure a position that they had no clout at all.
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You never monkey with the truth.
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It is my experience that most claims of national security are part of a campaign to avoid telling the truth.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Those [Watergate] tapes are going to take me to my grave with a huge smile on my face.
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In the perfect world every source could be identified, but like the man said, “It’s not a perfect world.”
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If an investigative reporter finds out that someone has been robbing the store, that may be ‘gotcha’ journalism, but it’s also good journalism.
BEN BRADLEE






