Sure, some journalists use anonymous sources just because they’re lazy and I think editors ought to insist on more precise identification even if they remain anonymous.

We were right about the slush fund. But Sloan did not testify about it to the Grand Jury.

It’s very hard to stand up to the government which is saying that publication will threaten national security. People don’t seem to realize that reporters and editors know something about national security and care deeply about it.

The first rough draft of history.

As a child, one looks for compliments. As an adult, one looks for evidence of effectiveness.

Hire people smarter than you are and encourage them to bloom.

I never believed that Nixon could fully resurrect himself. And the proof of that was in the obits.

Sure, some journalists use anonymous sources just because they’re lazy, and I think editors ought to insist on more precise identification even if they remain anonymous.

The history of American politics is littered with bodies of people who took so pure a position that they had no clout at all.

It is my experience that most claims of national security are part of a campaign to avoid telling the truth.

I think he had a strange, passionate devotion to the truth and a horror at what he saw going on.

I do worry about how newspapers respond to falling circulation figures. I’m not sure that the answer is for newspapers to try to cater to whatever seems to be the fad of the day.

Our best today; better tomorrow.

There will always be leaks; in Washington, everywhere.

They cut about seven minutes from that broadcast, but it was still vital to the story‘s momentum.

You never monkey with the truth.

The champagne was flowing like the Potomac in flood.

Sometimes I am convinced there is nothing wrong with this country that couldn’t be cured by the magical implantation of ethical standards on us all – leaders and followers. Until that becomes doable, the Center for Public Integrity is just about the best thing we have going for us.

The really tough thing would have been to decide to take Woodward and Bernstein off the story. They were carrying the coal for us – in that their stories were right.

Everybody who talks to a newspaper has a motive. That’s just a given. And good reporters always, repeat always, probe to find out what that motive is.

Nothing’s riding on this, except the First Amendment to the Constitution, freedom of the press and maybe the future of the country. Not that any of that matters, but if you guys f-k up again, I’m gonna get mad.

Maybe some of today’s papers have too many ‘feel-good’ features, but there is a lot of good news out there.

It changes your life, the pursuit of truth.

I give Cronkite a whole lot of credit.

If an investigative reporter finds out that someone has been robbing the store, that may be ‘gotcha’ journalism, but it’s also good journalism.

We made only one real mistake. And even then we were right.

To hell with news! I’m no longer interested in news. I’m interested in causes. We don’t print the truth. We don’t pretend to print the truth. We print what people tell us. It’s up to the public to decide what’s true.

It took us about a day and a half to find out what had gone wrong.

As long as a journalist tells the truth, in conscience and fairness, it is not his job to worry about consequences. The truth is never as dangerous as a lie in the long run. I truly believe the truth sets men free.

I must be out of it, but I don’t know any good journalists who have excused Clinton‘s problems.

It changes your life, the pursuit of truth, if you know that you have tried to find the truth and gone past the first apparent truth towards the real truth. It’s very, it’s very exciting.

There is nothing like daily journalism! Best damn job in the world!

There have been as many investigative reporters on this newspaper working on Clinton’s many problems as I can remember there were working on Watergate.