My sense is that, when you look at what people such as former Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein have said over the years, you don't go with a story unless you have two independent sources to confirm it.
Related quotes
The biggest rap on me is that I don't find a Watergate every couple of years. Well, Watergate was unique. It's not something Carl Bernstein, I, or the Washington Post caused.
quote by Bob Woodward
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Many people have their reputations as reporters and analysts because they are on television, batting around conventional wisdom. A lot of these people have never reported a story.
quote by Bob Woodward
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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.
quote by Ben Bradlee
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Newspapers that are truly independent, like The Washington Post, can still aggressively investigate anyone or anything with no holds barred.
quote by Bob Woodward
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I deal with first-hand sources. And give the people, even John Sununu, the opportunity to respond to what I've been told by first-hand sources.
quote by Bob Woodward
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I know that from the days of Watergate... the notion of two sources on a story has become the popular dogma about how you confirm something. And there is a lot of truth to that, but there are all kinds of ways to check to the extent that you can, a story that you get.
quote by Howard Fineman
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Clinton... believes that the Washington Press Corps is so out of touch that it is absolutely inconceivable that reporters would understand the issues that people are really dealing with in their lives.
quote by Bob Woodward
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The greatest felony in the news business today is to be behind, or to miss a big story. So speed and quantity substitute for thoroughness and quality, for accuracy and context.
quote by Carl Bernstein
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I never leaked information to Woodward and Bernstein or anyone else!
quote by W. Mark Felt
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Using these unnamed sources, if done properly, carefully and fairly, provides more accountability in government.
quote by Bob Woodward
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If information is true, if it can be verified, and if it's really important, the newspaper needs to be willing to take the risk associated with using unidentified sources.
quote by Bob Woodward
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I enjoyed doing the gag covers better than the story ones because they were usually simpler. A cover based on an incident in the plot took a great deal of staging to tell a little story that was still part of the book. And it had to make sense on its own.
quote by Carl Barks
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The lowest form of popular culture - lack of information, misinformation, disinformation, and a contempt for the truth or the reality of most people's lives - has overrun real journalism. Today, ordinary Americans are being stuffed with garbage.
quote by Carl Bernstein
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The professionalism of wire service reporters is constantly being tested because reporters know that if they're late or sloppy on a story, it will show up because the competition is likely to be not late and not sloppy.
quote by Bob Greene
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Turning Pages
Naiveté in younger years
And meager sense between my ears
What interested me the most
Were comic strips within the Post.
“Deep in Bengalla
Woods within the famed Skull Cave
The masked Phantom waits...”
Throughout advancing teenage years
My interest turned to social spheres
Again the Post is what I read
To see the people who were wed.
“Maryann Fulmer
And Nolan Zane Fullerton
Were married March 3rd….”
Turning the pages to sixty
I sport a silver-white goatee.
I still read the Post but only
Familiar obituaries.
“Nolan Fullerton
Of Whitehall, Pennsylvania
Passed away Monday…”
I keep turning the pages daily
Until the death bell tolls for me.
poem by Albert Ahearn
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I have gone on the air and announced my telephone number at the Washington Post. I go into the night, talking to people, looking for things. The great dreaded thing every reporter lives with is what you don't know. The source you didn't go to. The phone call you didn't return.
quote by Bob Woodward
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I believe Watergate shows that the system did work. Particularly the Judiciary and the Congress, and ultimately an independent prosecutor working in the Executive Branch.
quote by Bob Woodward
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I know a lot of reporters certainly will go to jail to defend confidential sources. Some have even gone to jail for an issue like this. But I can't say that's the norm.
quote by Floyd Abrams
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The pressure to compete, the fear somebody else will make the splash first, creates a frenzied environment in which a blizzard of information is presented and serious questions may not be raised.
quote by Carl Bernstein
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Many have been with the show for years, and they have sources in the business, so we do know things, but until it is verified, we don't run with the story.