As a child, one looks for compliments. As an adult, one looks for evidence of effectiveness.
BEN BRADLEEYou never monkey with the truth.
More Ben Bradlee Quotes
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I think he had a strange, passionate devotion to the truth and a horror at what he saw going on.
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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.
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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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The first rough draft of history.
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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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Our best today; better tomorrow.
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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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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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Those [Watergate] tapes are going to take me to my grave with a huge smile on my face.
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Generals who can write always make me nervous.
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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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In the perfect world every source could be identified, but like the man said, “It’s not a perfect world.”
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There will always be leaks; in Washington, everywhere.
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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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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.
BEN BRADLEE