{"id":1845,"date":"2014-10-23T01:07:53","date_gmt":"2014-10-23T01:07:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=1845"},"modified":"2016-08-13T07:24:19","modified_gmt":"2016-08-13T07:24:19","slug":"bradlee-was-a-bold-editor-who-helped-us-understand-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/bradlee-was-a-bold-editor-who-helped-us-understand-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Bradlee was a bold editor who helped us understand the world"},"content":{"rendered":"

By John Jewell<\/a>, Cardiff University<\/em><\/p>\n

Ben Bradlee, the former editor of the Washington Post, who has died at the age of 93 was a crusading and courageous editor. He played a central role in exposing duplicity and deception at the highest levels of the US government, and embodied some of the quintessential values of journalism.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the tribute made by Barack Obama<\/a> is most fitting:<\/p>\n

For Benjamin Bradlee, journalism was more than a profession \u2013 it was a public good vital to our democracy. A true newspaperman, he transformed the Washington Post into one of the country\u2019s finest newspapers and, with him at the helm, a growing army of reporters published the Pentagon Papers, exposed Watergate, and told stories that needed to be told \u2013 stories that helped us understand our world and one another a little bit better.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Exposure<\/h2>\n

It was with the 1971 publication of the Pentagon Papers<\/a> that Bradlee first brought the Washington Post to the world\u2019s attention. Bradlee defied the federal government to oversee the publication of the papers, which were based on the US government\u2019s official documents relating to involvement in Vietnam since the end of WWII.<\/p>\n

They were proof that successive administrations had misled the US public. More than this, by revealing that there had been military activity in Indo-China that had never been reported by the media, the Post highlighted the danger of journalists relying almost exclusively on government officials for information without questioning their national security sources. Plus \u00e7a change.<\/p>\n

Most famously, of course, Bradlee was instrumental in bringing Woodward and Bernstein\u2019s investigation into the Watergate scandal to global prominence in 1974. It was their reporting that brought about the impeachment of Richard Nixon \u2013 in the words of Ben Bagdikian, \u201cthe single most spectacular act of serious journalism [of the 20th] century.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the immediate aftermath of Bradlee\u2019s death, Woodward and Bernstein issued this joint statement<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Ben was a true friend and genius leader in journalism \u2026 He had the courage of an army. Ben had an intuitive understanding of the history of our profession, its formative impact on him and all of us. But he was utterly liberated from that. He was an original who charted his own course. We loved him deeply, and he will never be forgotten or replaced in our lives.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

All this being the case, a man with such a long life and career can hardly be above criticism.<\/p>\n

Humiliation<\/h2>\n

At the start of the 1980s, as a result of what many saw as the Washington Post\u2019s obsessive push for high-impact stories, the newspaper fell for a humiliating hoax in which a young journalist fabricated an interview<\/a> with a fictional eight-year-old heroin addict.<\/p>\n

When the story won the Pulitzer Prize in 1981 and the truth emerged, Bradlee and the Washington Post returned the prize<\/a> and ordered an immediate inquiry into professional practices.<\/p>\n

It is strange to think, too, that such a crusader as Bradlee would be an active member of the political classes of which he was supposedly the scourge. He went to Harvard, served in in the Navy during WWII and worked for the CIA\u2019s European propaganda unit during the 1950s before fully embarking on his journalistic career. He was, by all accounts, a man of little political conviction.<\/p>\n

To the general public, though, Bradlee was the archetypal editor, immortalised by Jason Robards\u2019s portrayal in \u201cAll the President\u2019s Men\u201d. Hardnosed, loyal, fearless, this was a newspaperman who trusted no-one but his reporters.<\/p>\n

For all his faults, he was exactly what we should want all our journalists to be.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

John Jewell does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.<\/em><\/p>\n

This article was originally published on The Conversation<\/a>.
\nRead the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By John Jewell, Cardiff University Ben Bradlee, the former editor of the Washington Post, who has died at the age of 93 was a crusading and courageous editor. He played a central role in exposing duplicity and deception at the highest levels of the US government, and embodied some of the quintessential values of journalism. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":5889,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,36,38],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1845"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1845"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1845\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5890,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1845\/revisions\/5890"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}