Ben Bradlee: The editor who toppled Nixon

Truth had consequences

IN A very different age and time, back in 1973, Ben Bradlee—the Washington Post editor whose newspaper uncovered the Watergate scandal, toppled President Richard Nixon and went to the Supreme Court to defend its right to publish a secret Pentagon history of the Vietnam War—summed up his code of honour. “As long as a journalist tells the truth, in conscience and fairness, it is not his job to worry about consequences,” declared Mr Bradlee, who died on October 21st, aged 93.The words rang with the swagger of his blue-blooded, New England upbringing: he was the 52nd male Bradlee to study at Harvard since 1795, learned to swear saltily in the wartime Navy, and later became close friends with a Georgetown neighbour, a young senator named John F. Kennedy. But his code also reflected the self-confidence of a news industry that—for most of his career—was enjoying a golden age of power and profitability.No American editor could pen such a declaration now without hearing every word challenged or mocked. Partisans of Right and Left scoff at claims of journalistic fairness. As for being guided by...



from The Economist: United States http://ift.tt/1FItQOf