Benjamin Crowninshield Bradlee
Portrait by Ed Pierce (1992)
Born: 26 August 1921, Boston, Massachusetts
Born into the "Brahmin" Crowninshield family, Bradlee was educated at Dexter School and St. Mark's School before entering Harvard University. He joined the Naval ROTC at Harvard, finished his BA in under three years, and was commissioned in the Office of Naval Intelligence two hours later. He served on a destroyer in the Pacific, handling communications but taking part in every landing of the Solomon Islands and Philippines campaigns. He spent two years reporting in New Hampshire before moving to the Washington Post in 1948, then became press attaché in the American Embassy at Paris. He returned to journalism by joining the Newsweek staff in Europe, helped arrange the sale of that magazine to the Washington Post Company, and became managing editor at that paper in 1965. He became executive editor in 1968, in 1991 he retired and is now "Vice President at Large". He is best known as Woodward and Bernstein's editor during Watergate, but hesitated to print the "Pentagon Papers" until the New York Times published parts of them, and also was in charge at the time of Janet Cooke's fictitious story of an eight-year-old heroin addict.
Biography from Wikipedia and MSN Encarta
Ben Bradlee quotes:
Quotes found : 29 — (15 per page, this is page 1 of 2) 1 2 Next
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- As a child, one looks for compliments. As an adult, one looks for evidence of effectiveness. permalink
Ben Bradlee - 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. permalink
Ben Bradlee - Generals who can write always make me nervous. permalink
Ben Bradlee - I didn't need Jason Robards to tell me that if we were wrong the damage to the paper would be incalculable. permalink
Ben Bradlee - 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. permalink
Ben Bradlee - I don't mean to sound arrogant, but we're in a holy profession. permalink
Ben Bradlee - I must be out of it, but I don't know any good journalists who have excused Clinton's problems. permalink
Ben Bradlee - I never believed that Nixon could fully resurrect himself. And the proof of that was in the obits. permalink
Ben Bradlee - I'm a maximum information man myself. permalink
Ben Bradlee - I'm sure that Nixon's paranoia stemmed in part from Vietnam, although probably not as much as Lyndon Johnson's. permalink
Ben Bradlee - If an investigative reporter finds out that someone has been robbing the store, that may be "gotcha" journalism, but it's also good journalism. permalink
Ben Bradlee - In the perfect world every source could be identified, but like the man said, "It's not a perfect world." permalink
Ben Bradlee - 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. permalink
Ben Bradlee - It is my experience that most claims of national security are part of a campaign to avoid telling the truth. permalink
Ben Bradlee - It'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. permalink
Ben Bradlee
Quotes found : 29 — (15 per page, this is page 1 of 2) 1 2 Next
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