The media vs those in power: Lessons from legendary ex-Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee

Every week The Money Show interviews the author or reviewer of a new or trending business book.

This week Stephen Grootes talked to Pieter du Toit, author and assistant editor for Investigations at News24 after he delved into a journalism classic over the festive period.

Du Toit reviewed A Good Life: Newspapering and Other Adventures, the memoir of legendary press figure Benjamin Bradlee, former editor of The Washington Post.

Bradlee was famously executive editor when the paper broke the Watergate scandal which brought down then-president Richard Nixon, and challenged the US government over the right to publish the Pentagon Papers.

"Bradlee edited The Washington Post between 1965 and 1991 and helped to elevate what was really a flailing local newspaper to the point where it rivalled the New York Times as a national newspaper. And while now it might not have the reach and the size of the Times, is certainly considered one of the world's great papers."

"During his tenure, Bradlee oversaw obviously the Watergate coverage into corruption in the US government, into corruption in the Nixon administration; and then he oversaw the publication of the Pentagon Papers which showed that the government lied to the US public over a period of time in relation to the real state of affairs in Vietnam."

"I really enjoyed it from a journalist point of view, just getting affirmation of what the job is that we do, why we do it, how we as journalists hold specifically people with power to account, and of course those in political power. Bradlee was someone who was able to navigate some of our biggest stories over the last century or so and it was fascinating to get an inside look into that."

"History doesn't repeat but it rhymes. And we might think (from a South African perspective) that the Jacob Zuma era might be abnormal, you might think that the Nixon era might have been abnormal - but in the end when politicians are given and assume political power, it tends to have an adverse effect on people's judgment. With Nixon it wasn't in as much the deed of the break-in at the Watergate Hotel that sank him, it was the lie and the coverup, the persistent denials of the reportage in the Washington Post."

"What is also fascinating in the book was that Bradlee was close to politicians; he became friends with John F. Kennedy before he was even a presidential candidate, and found it very difficult to navigate this when Kennedy was president. In this business we need to navigate the spaces between ourselves and those who have power very adroitly - whether it's economic, cultural or political power, because you need to manage sources, you need to manage people you speak to, but you also need to understand that you do a job on behalf of the public and you are never friends with the people that you write about."

"When Kennedy died, there was a moment when Bradlee realised their relationship was not one of friendship but that Kennedy used him... Following that, the Johnson years, the Nixon years, the Reagan years, the start of the Clinton presidency... he was very firm about the fact that the Washington Post, the journalists that work there - the Woodwards, the Bernsteins, himself as editor, were not there to be liked. Their job, pure and simple, was to get the truth out, no matter who was in power. Their relationship was with their readers and that's where it started and ended."

"And yes, I think the press in the US right now seem to be browbeaten - they seem to be beaten into submission by not only the hardhandedness with which the Trump administration is handling the media, but by the pure velocity and the speed with which things are changing."

Description on Barnes & Noble:

The classic New York Times bestselling memoir by legendary executive editor of The Washington Post Ben Bradlee - with a new foreword by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein and an afterword by Sally Quinn.

The most important, glamorous, and famous newspaperman of modern times traces his path from Harvard to the battles of the South Pacific to the pinnacle of success at The Washington Post. After Bradlee took the helm in 1965, he and his reporters transformed the Post into one of the most influential and respected news publications in the world, reinvented modern investigative journalism, won eighteen Pulitzer Prizes, and redefined the way news is reported, published, and read.

His leadership and investigative drive during the Watergate scandal led to the downfall of a president, and his challenge to the government over the right to publish the Pentagon Papers changed the course of American history.

Bradlee’s timeless memoir is a fascinating, irreverent, earthy, and revealing look at America and American journalism in the twentieth century—a “sassy, sometimes eye-poppingly, engrossing autobiography...must reading” (The New York Times Book Review).

Scroll up to the audio player to listen to the conversation with Pieter du Toit