Ben Bradlee Quotes

There have been many times when we have not run stories because we cannot get it verified.

In my experience with print journalists, the distinction between remarks being uttered on- or off-the-record is held sacrosanct, but the distinction between truth and falsity sometimes isn't.

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

The more servile a reporter is toward his sources, the more authoritative he can appear in print.

We need ethical journalism. There is also capacity limitations in journalism.

I think it's a lack of journalistic integrity to print things with anonymous sources.

If a journalist comes to you with a great story, one of the first questions you ask is how did you get it. How you got it is relevant to judging its accuracy and preparing yourself for any legal challenge.

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

The media's gotten lazy. They don't check anything out. You report what he reports.

I hate newspapermen. They come into camp and pick up their camp rumors and print them as facts. I regard them as spies, which, in truth, they are.

No, there are no hard and fast rules about sources, no printed booklet to help journalists through.

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.

Media is just a word that has come to mean bad journalism.

Using these unnamed sources, if done properly, carefully and fairly, provides more accountability in government.

My sense is that, when you look at what people such as former Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein have said over the years, you don't go with a story unless you have two independent sources to confirm it.

We in the media should be breaking the news and not making the news.

All in all, I just don't trust journalists - and I don't think it's a good practice for me to trust journalists.

Careful authors and journalists cultivate relationships with a wide variety of sources so as to avoid bad information or being led down an inaccurate path. Gossip columnists don't particularly care if the path is inaccurate, so long as it gets attention and results in more fuel for the fire.

It's the broadcaster's dilemma. Are we true journalists? I don't know if I am or not.

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.

One of the differences between what happens when an author and a gossip columnist sit down to write a book is that the former tends to make every effort at disguising and protecting their sources, while the latter doesn't particularly care.

I have so much more compassion for journalists and the work that they have to do, in order to do the jobs that they have to do. I am much more in awe of and am celebratory of great journalism when I see it, and I'm much more critical of bad journalism, or crap masquerading as journalism.

I believe journalism is coming to be regarded as quite a respectable occupation for gentlemen nowadays.

Journalism is not a precise science, it's a crude art

The function of good journalism is to take information and add value to it.