PBS Frontline -- Cheney Dark Side 6/19, 9EDT

Is there an official thread for this tonight? It should already be playing on the east coast.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bradlee/


The use of unnamed sources by journalists desperate to get the big story dates back long before Ben Bradlee's Washington Post. But it was Bradlee's team of Bob Woodward and Carl Berstein and their use of the famous "Deep Throat" to help them break the Watergate story that helped thrust the issue into the spotlight.

And although he sometimes bemoans the use of off-the-record sources, Bradlee admits his paper's decisions to use Deep Throat, whose identity remained secret for more than 30 years, ushered in a new era of anonymous reporting.


Jim Lehrer: Much of the credit or blame, depending on how you want to see this, for the proliferation of the use of anonymous sources is laid right at your feet--

Ben Bradlee: Yep.

Jim Lehrer: -- yours and The Washington Post or --

Ben Bradlee: Yeah.

Jim Lehrer: Woodward and Bernstein as a result of Deep Throat and Watergate. Guilty as charged?

Ben Bradlee: Often, yeah. But I mean, like Watergate ... if you have a high official telling you there is monkey business going on at the highest level, you've got to listen, to try and find out what it is and how you can get a piece of it, You've got to play by their rules to begin with.