Journalism is a business with few heroes; most editors inspire as many grumbles from their newsrooms as plaudits. But some stand out all the same. With his patrician good looks, sailor’s foul tongue and what one obituarist referred to as “that cement mixer voice”, Ben Bradlee, who edited the Washington Post for 26 years, is one. The swagger and machismo may evoke an earlier era, but Bradlee’s staunch defiance in the face of authority is a timeless quality – one that is essential to the very idea of a free press. He believed that journalism was no mere profession, but a public good on which democracy depends.
He is lionised, rightly, for his role leading the team that exposed the political scandal that came to define the genre: Watergate. Were it not for Bradlee’s tenacity and refusal to be intimidated, Richard Nixon might have got away with his insistence that the break-in was a “third-rate burglary” and he was “not a crook”. He would have served out his term. Scandals would be known by another suffix besides “-gate”. But Bradlee’s determination to reveal the US role in expanding the Vietnam war and, by publishing the Pentagon papers, to stand up for press freedom against the charge of treason, is a crucial part of his legacy too.
Bradlee was no ideologue. He believed simply in the obligation to publish the truth, no matter the pressure to keep it hidden, no matter how great the embarrassment to those with power. That made Bradlee, always with the support of Katharine Graham, the Post’s owner, a hero to those who worked for him – and a hero he will remain.
