The Nixon administration really put a lot of pressure on CBS not to run the second broadcast.
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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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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There is nothing like daily journalism! Best damn job in the world!
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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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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.
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Nothing’s riding on this, except the First Amendment to the Constitution, freedom of the press and maybe the future of the country. Not that any of that matters, but if you guys f-k up again, I’m gonna get mad.
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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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It changes your life, the pursuit of truth.
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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 first rough draft of history.
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The champagne was flowing like the Potomac in flood.
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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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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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You never monkey with the truth.
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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.
BEN BRADLEE