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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.

Ben Bradlee

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

Campaign Claims Telling Truth
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.
BEN BRADLEE

Given Motive Newspapers
Those [Watergate] tapes are going to take me to my grave with a huge smile on my face.
BEN BRADLEE

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

Passionate Saws Thinking
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
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.
BEN BRADLEE

Journalist National Problem Security Tremble
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
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
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
The first rough draft of history.
BEN BRADLEE

Drafts Firsts Journalism Rough
Generals who can write always make me nervous.
BEN BRADLEE

Always General Nervous Writing
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
I never believed that Nixon could fully resurrect himself. And the proof of that was in the obits.
BEN BRADLEE

Orbit Proof Resurrect Resurrection
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
Hire people smarter than you are and encourage them to bloom.
BEN BRADLEE

Encourage People Smarter
There is nothing like daily journalism! Best damn job in the world!
BEN BRADLEE

Jobs Journalism World

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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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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