HBO film examines life, legend of Bradlee

Benjamin Crowninshield Bradlee was a titan of journalism, and many people — including those interviewed for the HBO documentary "The Newspaperman: The Life and Times of Ben Bradlee’’ — say that he was the last of his kind.

The question we're left with, though, is whether journalism itself has evolved so much in just the past few years, for better and worse, that there might not be a place for a Ben Bradlee today? The film, directed by John Maggio, will be shown tonight on HBO.

Although Bradlee, who died in 2014, was most identified as the editor of The

Washington Post in the 1970s when Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward exposed the real story of the "thirdrate break-in" known as Watergate, there are aspects of Maggio’s film that seem all too contemporary — specifically, the Nixon administration’s skulduggery designed to undermine the credibility of the press.

At one point, President Richard Nixon ordered press secretary Ron Ziegler to make sure no reporter for The Washington Post was allowed to enter the White House. Does that ring a current bell?

Bradlee, though, wasn’t to be cowed; nor was his morereserved boss, Katharine Graham, publisher of the Post. Graham was left in charge of the paper after the death of her husband, Philip. At that time, the Post was an also-ran in the D.C. media world. But Graham smartly gave Bradlee all but free rein to make the Post count.

Born into the Boston upper crust, Bradlee attended Harvard University; became a foreign correspondent; and got a job at the Post, where he became friendly with Philip Graham. After a stint with the forerunner of the U.S. Information Agency, he returned to reporting, for Newsweek.

In the 1950s, Bradlee and his second wife, Antoinette Pinchot, became friendly with Sen. John F. Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline. When Kennedy ran for president, Bradlee was often on the campaign plane with him. Bradlee’s chummy relationship with Kennedy raised eyebrows. The Kennedys and Bradlees partied together, sailed together and dined together frequently.

Maggio’s film is narrated by Bradlee himself, reading from his memoir. The contributors all but ensure the idolizing nature of the film: Sally Quinn, Bradlee’s third wife; Donald Graham, son of Katharine and Philip;

Woodward; Bernsein; TV journalist Jim Lehrer; TV producer Norman Lear; actor Robert Redford; and others.

Henry Kissinger grumbles about the Post endangering national security, but no one brings up other shortcomings. If the film were about someone else, Bradlee might have insisted on a script rewrite.

To its credit, “The Newspaperman” talks about the Janet Cooke mess in 1981, when the Post simply took the word of the reporter that she’d found an 8-year-old heroin addict in D.C. She won a Pulitzer Prize for "Jimmy’s Story,” but other reporters had questioned its veracity.

Bradlee ordered an investigation, which proved that Cooke had invented the character. The film deals with the story factually but quickly.

Ben Bradlee was brash, fearless and driven. He wasn’t perfect, by any means, although the only regrets he mentions center on possibly causing pain to his first two wives.

Although legitimate journalists still crusade for truth and accuracy, the landscape has changed dramatically, making it harder to trust that truth will win out.

Sadly, even if a Ben Bradlee were out there, it’s difficult to imagine how he or she could counter the flood of misinformation, pathological lying and social- media bullying that has become a weak standin for real journalism in 2017.