Interview: Ben Bradlee, Washington Post (Evening Standard)
Legendary Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee says our politicians have become better liars than ever. By David Rowan
IF Ben Bradlee has learned one thing in his distinguished journalistic career, it is that governments invariably lie - and journalists who quote them uncritically perpetuate their lies. So, as the White House and Downing Street prepare for war against Iraq, he has a message for the media and the wider public: don't believe a damn thing they tell you.
"Before you write anything, before you take their word for anything, you ought to carefully study the possibility that they are dissembling. Think about why they might want to put a spin on something in a way that changes the facts."
He should know. As the Washington Post's editor during the Nixon years, it was Bradlee - memorably played by Jason Robards in All the President's Men - who backed his reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein and so brought down the president. He may have retired 12 years ago, to become the newspaper's globetrotting "vice-president-at-large", but with a reputation as one of the past century's most influential newspapermen, his retirement is anything but quiet.
This week, for example, he is in London for a board meeting of Independent News & Media and to interview journalists for a summer fellowship at the Washington Post. A genial, elegant man, his lapelpocket handkerchief ironed to perfection, he has, at 81, lost little of his mental agility, nor his expletivefilled hackspeak. Today, he is directing his "goddams" and "f***ers" at the politicians determined to silence the truth in the event of war.
"It's hard to explain the efforts the Bush administration is going to to keep us in the dark," he says. "Can you believe all you're told by the government? Of course not. So you bring to bear your years of being deceived and lied to. And this administration is perhaps a little more zealous than its predecessors about keeping secrets."
Once war starts, he warns, it will be "very dangerous" to trust the official reports. "They almost never turn out to be true," he says. "In a war, we'll be talked to by people who don't know the truth, who know half the truth, or who are simply lying. It's a miracle that the truth does eventually get out."
Still, he considers the international press in good shape to challenge the official line, helped especially by the new generation of cheap, portable videophones that will make censorship impossible. The Post has supported Bush editorially, but, for his own part, Bradlee is "mystified" that the President has pushed for war. "God, I don't seek war over Iraq, and Bush is losing support by going it alone. Today we've got troops all over the goddam place."
HIS main interest in the British press, apart from delighting in our obituaries ("They're just great - an ecclesiastical sculptor, for God's sake!") - is The Independent, on whose editorial advisory board he sits. "Tony O'Reilly has more goddam boards than Jimmy Carter had liver pills," he says. But will any of them help stem the paper's declining circulation? He is diplomatic. "I don't know the answer, but O'Reilly's worked hard to gain control, and it would surprise me if he surrendered that control without such a battle. Yes, a paper should make a profit or be headed that way, but there are lots of papers that are not making money in Britain, I understand."
When not at board meetings, he has been writing about the Battle of Midway, running a small museum in Maryland and lecturing. He has also taught a course on dishonesty at Georgetown University. "I've become very interested in lying," he says, "the kind of lying that melds with spin so the truth gets lost in the swamp. I don't ever believe the first version of anything I'm told.
"Look what happened when we published the Pentagon papers, 30 years ago, and we and The New York Times were taken to the Supreme Court for violating national-security laws. Then, 18 years later, the prosecutor admitted there had never been any national-security violations. That truth took almost 20 years to find."
One of his Georgetown lectures considered the anonymously sourced briefing. "I don't approve of it," he explains. "If we have to hide someone's identity, we should at least help the reader a little - whether they're young or old, military or non-military. In one assignment, I asked students to find two lies on the front page of the Post and the New York Times. They got so good at it that it soon stopped taking any effort."
ASKED to point out the lies in the morning's broadsheets he gladly complies. "Well, I'd like to know more about the Matthew Kelly case for a start," he says glancing at The Daily Telegraph.
"And this headline about Chirac being able to make a conflict difficult. Are we sure about that? You also get a lot of lying in medical stories - this story about 'smart clothes' that stop you smelling doesn't sound right to me."
One of Bradlee's great lessons is that a determined journalist asking the right question might just hit the jackpot. So would he please break 30 years of silence and finally reveal the identity of Deep Throat, the anonymous Watergate source?
"It was nice of you to wait this long before you brought that up," he answers, a tad wearily. "All I'll say is he's male, he's still alive, but beyond that it's not my secret to tell. It's Woodward's secret - and I have every reason to believe he'll reveal it."
(Evening Standard, February 26 2003)
IF Ben Bradlee has learned one thing in his distinguished journalistic career, it is that governments invariably lie - and journalists who quote them uncritically perpetuate their lies. So, as the White House and Downing Street prepare for war against Iraq, he has a message for the media and the wider public: don't believe a damn thing they tell you.
"Before you write anything, before you take their word for anything, you ought to carefully study the possibility that they are dissembling. Think about why they might want to put a spin on something in a way that changes the facts."
He should know. As the Washington Post's editor during the Nixon years, it was Bradlee - memorably played by Jason Robards in All the President's Men - who backed his reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein and so brought down the president. He may have retired 12 years ago, to become the newspaper's globetrotting "vice-president-at-large", but with a reputation as one of the past century's most influential newspapermen, his retirement is anything but quiet.
This week, for example, he is in London for a board meeting of Independent News & Media and to interview journalists for a summer fellowship at the Washington Post. A genial, elegant man, his lapelpocket handkerchief ironed to perfection, he has, at 81, lost little of his mental agility, nor his expletivefilled hackspeak. Today, he is directing his "goddams" and "f***ers" at the politicians determined to silence the truth in the event of war.
"It's hard to explain the efforts the Bush administration is going to to keep us in the dark," he says. "Can you believe all you're told by the government? Of course not. So you bring to bear your years of being deceived and lied to. And this administration is perhaps a little more zealous than its predecessors about keeping secrets."
Once war starts, he warns, it will be "very dangerous" to trust the official reports. "They almost never turn out to be true," he says. "In a war, we'll be talked to by people who don't know the truth, who know half the truth, or who are simply lying. It's a miracle that the truth does eventually get out."
Still, he considers the international press in good shape to challenge the official line, helped especially by the new generation of cheap, portable videophones that will make censorship impossible. The Post has supported Bush editorially, but, for his own part, Bradlee is "mystified" that the President has pushed for war. "God, I don't seek war over Iraq, and Bush is losing support by going it alone. Today we've got troops all over the goddam place."
HIS main interest in the British press, apart from delighting in our obituaries ("They're just great - an ecclesiastical sculptor, for God's sake!") - is The Independent, on whose editorial advisory board he sits. "Tony O'Reilly has more goddam boards than Jimmy Carter had liver pills," he says. But will any of them help stem the paper's declining circulation? He is diplomatic. "I don't know the answer, but O'Reilly's worked hard to gain control, and it would surprise me if he surrendered that control without such a battle. Yes, a paper should make a profit or be headed that way, but there are lots of papers that are not making money in Britain, I understand."
When not at board meetings, he has been writing about the Battle of Midway, running a small museum in Maryland and lecturing. He has also taught a course on dishonesty at Georgetown University. "I've become very interested in lying," he says, "the kind of lying that melds with spin so the truth gets lost in the swamp. I don't ever believe the first version of anything I'm told.
"Look what happened when we published the Pentagon papers, 30 years ago, and we and The New York Times were taken to the Supreme Court for violating national-security laws. Then, 18 years later, the prosecutor admitted there had never been any national-security violations. That truth took almost 20 years to find."
One of his Georgetown lectures considered the anonymously sourced briefing. "I don't approve of it," he explains. "If we have to hide someone's identity, we should at least help the reader a little - whether they're young or old, military or non-military. In one assignment, I asked students to find two lies on the front page of the Post and the New York Times. They got so good at it that it soon stopped taking any effort."
ASKED to point out the lies in the morning's broadsheets he gladly complies. "Well, I'd like to know more about the Matthew Kelly case for a start," he says glancing at The Daily Telegraph.
"And this headline about Chirac being able to make a conflict difficult. Are we sure about that? You also get a lot of lying in medical stories - this story about 'smart clothes' that stop you smelling doesn't sound right to me."
One of Bradlee's great lessons is that a determined journalist asking the right question might just hit the jackpot. So would he please break 30 years of silence and finally reveal the identity of Deep Throat, the anonymous Watergate source?
"It was nice of you to wait this long before you brought that up," he answers, a tad wearily. "All I'll say is he's male, he's still alive, but beyond that it's not my secret to tell. It's Woodward's secret - and I have every reason to believe he'll reveal it."
(Evening Standard, February 26 2003)
posted by David Rowan at Wednesday, February 26, 2003
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