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.
BEN BRADLEEThe Nixon administration really put a lot of pressure on CBS not to run the second broadcast.
More Ben Bradlee Quotes
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I never believed that Nixon could fully resurrect himself. And the proof of that was in the obits.
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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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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.
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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.
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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.
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It changes your life, the pursuit of truth.
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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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The Nixon administration really put a lot of pressure on CBS not to run the second broadcast.
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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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Generals who can write always make me nervous.
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Hire people smarter than you are and encourage them to bloom.
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Maybe some of today’s papers have too many ‘feel-good’ features, but there is a lot of good news out there.
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As a child, one looks for compliments. As an adult, one looks for evidence of effectiveness.
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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.
BEN BRADLEE