Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Jeff Himmelman: The Storm Over My Ben Bradlee Book, ‘Yours in Truth’


May 14, 2012 The Daily Beast

Jeff Himmelman has been raked over the coals in the two weeks since his authorized biography of the Washington Post legend was published. He asks critics to read the book before deciding whether it casts Bradlee in a 'bad light.

In April 1974, a few months before President Nixon resigned, Ben Bradlee, the executive editor of The Washington Post, gave one of the most thoughtful speeches of his life. In it, he talked about the fact that journalism is produced in “an adversary environment where the goals of the reported inherently conflict with the goals of the reporter and the reader.”

“It is this daily conflict that gives concrete importance and meaning to the First Amendment, to freedom of the press,” Ben said. “Without that freedom there is no conflict, and without that conflict there is no truth.”

During the past two weeks, my former boss Bob Woodward has compared me to Richard Nixon, referred to me in the pages of The Washington Post and The New York Times as “dishonest,” and generally attempted to discredit me and my authorized biography of Bradlee, Yours in Truth, which was released by Random House last Tuesday. The prevailing narrative in nearly every description of my work thus far, much of which has been influenced by Bob, is that I “betrayed” my former mentor to write a cheap “tell-all.” The New York Times, in a Styles section piece published Sunday, compares my book, a 473-page, deeply researched portrait of Bradlee, to the novel The Devil Wears Prada.
Full story at The Daily Beast.

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