A Brief by Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper
He was an inspiration to countless thousands of us who grew up wanting to get a job in a newsroom in the 1970s.
Ben Bradlee was the prototype of one of the last managing editors of journastic integrity and courage in a now-gone golden age of North American newspapers.
The journalist in me cannot move on without saying at least a few words about Ben Bradlee, who died this October 21st at age 93 and who was managing editor of the Washington Post when that newspaper broke a long series of stories adding up to what became known as the Watergate scandal that, in 1974, led to Richard Nixon becoming the first president in U.S. history to resign in disgrace.
If you ever saw the 1976 movie ‘All the President’s Men’, which was a fine film in its own right but which also served as a primer for many a fledgling news reporter at the time, there was legendary actor Jason Robards playing Ben Bradlee, along with Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford playing reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward respectively, as they re-enacted the true drama of investigative stories that led to the ultimate downfall of a person holding the most powerful office in the world.
In that film, you can witness the Ben Bradlee character reminding these then junior reporters over again, just as the real Bradlee did, to make damn sure that they had not only double checked, but triple checked every key point before any story in this saga was published. What needs to be remembered, as much as there has always been this view out there that newspapers love ‘exploiting’ scandals to sell papers, is that the Washington Post was sticking its neck out investigating allegations against a president that had just recently won a second term of office in a landslide. Any factual missteps at the time could have destroyed the credibility of the Post and everyone working in that paper’s newsroom could have been destroyed for years to come.
It took a great deal of courage and intelligence on the part of Bradlee and the then-independent newspaper he worked to report on this scandal – the uncovering of which was clearly in the public interest.
Bradlee and the reporters, Woodward and Bernstein, became templates for many editors and reporters across North America for many years to come, including the then-independent St. Catharines I came to work for in 1979 through most of the 1990s.
All too sadly, many newspapers across North America have had their news-gathering resources so eviscerated by those who now own shares to them that they can no longer do that kind of investigative coverage. And even if the will is there among the remaining news staff, the walls of too many newsrooms have been breached by advertising departments on a mission to pass off promotional features for their clients as bonafide news.
These are some of the thoughts that go through my mind today with the passing of Ben Bradlee – just one more reminder that a golden age for newspapers in North America is relegated to the ash bins of history.
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