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The first rough draft of history.

Ben Bradlee

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.
BEN BRADLEE

Causes News People
As a child, one looks for compliments. As an adult, one looks for evidence of effectiveness.
BEN BRADLEE

Adult Children Effectiveness
Generals who can write always make me nervous.
BEN BRADLEE

Always General Nervous Writing
You never monkey with the truth.
BEN BRADLEE

Animal Monkey Truth
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.
BEN BRADLEE

Gone Past Real
Maybe some of today’s papers have too many ‘feel-good’ features, but there is a lot of good news out there.
BEN BRADLEE

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

Body People Politics
I never believed that Nixon could fully resurrect himself. And the proof of that was in the obits.
BEN BRADLEE

Orbit Proof Resurrect Resurrection
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

Fall Trying Worry
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.
BEN BRADLEE

Jobs Lying Running
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.
BEN BRADLEE

Girl Numbers People
The champagne was flowing like the Potomac in flood.
BEN BRADLEE

Cooking Culinary Food
More likely to mean the security or the personal happiness of the guy who is telling you something.
BEN BRADLEE

Guy Personal Something Telling
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.
BEN BRADLEE

Government Jail Mean
Those [Watergate] tapes are going to take me to my grave with a huge smile on my face.
BEN BRADLEE

Faces Graves Tape
The Nixon administration really put a lot of pressure on CBS not to run the second broadcast.
BEN BRADLEE

Administration Pressure Running

The first rough draft of history.

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The first rough draft of history.

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