Ben Bradlee – a paragon of journalistic integrity

Former Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, who supervised Woodward and Bernstein through Watergate, had some harsh words for Newsweek recently. From Editor and Publisher: “Ben Bradlee criticizes Newsweek on sourcing debacle”

Ben Bradlee, former executive editor of The Washington Post and a onetime Newsweek D.C. bureau chief, criticized the news magazine for taking too long to retract its recent, inadequately sourced Koran-abuse item. He added that under certain circumstances he would reveal a source who lied to a reporter and came out against single-source stories, in a conversation Monday with E&P.

Why in his days, Bradlee would never stand for such journalistic malfeasance! Unless, of course, you’re trying to bring down Nixon:

It calls to mind the highest achievement of modern journalism, which as we all know was Watergate. If you read the self-encomium by Woodward and Bernstein--"All the President's Men"--you will discover, after the confessions of tampering with a grand jury and illegally obtaining telephone records, the story of a very bad day for our heroes and for their editor Ben Bradlee. WoodBern had run a front page story that day, and by noon they had been ravaged by Nixon's Press Secretary, Ron Nessen, who denied it all and called them liars and frauds. They checked with the Delphic Oracle, then plying his trade under the pseudonym "Deep Throat." He confirmed Nessen's claims. The story was wrong. The Post had lied. So WoodBern went to Bradlee, who wrestled with his conscience and quickly won: "F**k it," he said, "let's go stand by our boys," and he wrote an editorial reasserting the Post's confidence in the story.

That and more transgressions against Bradlee’s Washington Post are also recounted here. The more things change, Ben?