Lowell Bergman Quotes

Simply stated, sometimes journalists can only get their information from informants who must remain anonymous in order to protect their careers and sometimes even their lives: Watergate: Confidential sources. The Pentagon Papers: Confidential sources. Enron: Confidential sources.

Well, a lot of people don't want to be quoted. But keep in mind that Bob Woodward did all of his Watergate reporting with anonymous sources, and we know how that turned out.

In Washington, non-attribution is a way of life.

I was unknown because I came to Washington from the West. I started covering Watergate. Immodestly, I'd say I did it pretty well, in part because it was hard to go wrong.

I think Bob Woodward's books are important books.

There was an honorable tradition of using anonymous sources that was ruined by Jayson Blair.

I have always been a big meta guy because I think the way journalism is practiced in Washington, and the way everyone sort of cohabitates in the same fishbowl is ultimately a bigger part of the story than people outside of the fishbowl really know.

I started working as a reporter in Washington on October 1, 2013, the day the government stopped working.

When I was collecting material for a political gossip column, and someone said something interesting, I would wait for them to add, 'and I don't want to read that in your magazine!' In which case I wouldn't use it. But if they didn't remember to say it, I'd nip off to the loo, write the story up, come back and change the subject.

I thought that was the crown jewel of the reporter's resume - to actually go to jail protecting a source.

You know, I was at CBS News for 28 years. I may have run an unidentified source. Frankly, I don't remember.

There's a Washington standard of casually putting things off the record. It's really gone too far. I don't know an easy way to turn it back.

Deep Throat was a very unfortunate name given to the source by the managing editor of The Washington Post.

People would know virtually nothing about their government were it not for confidential sources who can speak without fear of retaliation.

I wrote a lot about Cheney in 'The New Yorker,' but I wrote very little of what I know. The only time I ever mentioned what he ever said at a meeting was when there were many people there who were not insiders, you know, other people not in the government, so my sources would be protected.

'All the President's Men' is a movie that has a very personal place for me because it made me want to be a journalist, and then it made me want to be a filmmaker.

I've said many times: I'm not a Washington reporter.

Covering Capitol Hill was my first assignment in political journalism, and I still think it is the best beat in Washington.

Over and over again-in the movie, I have nine different people who have worked for Fox News network who have come forward and talked on camera, three of them anonymously, by the way.

Wikileaks in its essence is a publisher, pure and simple. They were very much in the same position as 'The New York Times' and 'The Guardian.'

Surely the glory of journalism is its transience.

Washington is the only city in the world where you can go to a black-tie dinner and there at the foot of the table is a television set up to catch a press conference.

Deep Throat is a guy who could have your files and mine in his trust.

The source known as Deep Throat provided a kind of road map through the scandal. His one consistent message was that the Watergate burglary was just the tip of the iceberg.

Deep Throat did serve the public interest by providing the guidance and information to us.