The first rough draft of history.
BEN BRADLEESo, 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.
More Ben Bradlee Quotes
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You never monkey with the truth.
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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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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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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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Hire people smarter than you are and encourage them to bloom.
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It is my experience that most claims of national security are part of a campaign to avoid telling the truth.
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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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Those [Watergate] tapes are going to take me to my grave with a huge smile on my face.
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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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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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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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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.
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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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I never believed that Nixon could fully resurrect himself. And the proof of that was in the obits.
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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