The champagne was flowing like the Potomac in flood.
BEN BRADLEEThe champagne was flowing like the Potomac in flood.
BEN BRADLEEAs 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 BRADLEEIt 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 BRADLEEThe first rough draft of history.
BEN BRADLEEEverybody 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 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.
BEN BRADLEEMore likely to mean the security or the personal happiness of the guy who is telling you something.
BEN BRADLEENational 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 BRADLEEIt changes your life, the pursuit of truth.
BEN BRADLEESure, 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 BRADLEEAs a child, one looks for compliments. As an adult, one looks for evidence of effectiveness.
BEN BRADLEEIf an investigative reporter finds out that someone has been robbing the store, that may be ‘gotcha’ journalism, but it’s also good journalism.
BEN BRADLEEI think he had a strange, passionate devotion to the truth and a horror at what he saw going on.
BEN BRADLEENothing’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.
BEN BRADLEEYou never monkey with the truth.
BEN BRADLEEThose [Watergate] tapes are going to take me to my grave with a huge smile on my face.
BEN BRADLEE