In the perfect world every source could be identified, but like the man said, “It’s not a perfect world.”
BEN BRADLEEIt’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.
More Ben Bradlee Quotes
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Generals who can write always make me nervous.
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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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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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You never monkey with the truth.
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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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Those [Watergate] tapes are going to take me to my grave with a huge smile on my face.
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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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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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Hire people smarter than you are and encourage them to bloom.
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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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Our best today; better tomorrow.
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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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The Nixon administration really put a lot of pressure on CBS not to run the second broadcast.
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More likely to mean the security or the personal happiness of the guy who is telling you something.
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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.
BEN BRADLEE