No Compromises

You're an experienced, proven leader in journalism, in business, and I would imagine there have been probably many times in your career where you've been tempted or perhaps other people tempted you to cut corners in reporting and business, perhaps maybe even in your personal life. Can you give us a specific instance of a time when you felt like your principles were really tested, where you felt like you had to really wrestle with the decision? And how did you deal with that?

Well, we have close to a thousand journalists in The Washington Post newsroom, and they report on a variety of subjects every day. And from time to time, there will be people who just don't want their subject to be reported on. They might be an office holder. They might be someone running an organization where investigative reporters are asking questions. And from time to time, they'll reach out. And not just to me. They'll reach out to other people. They reach out to editors. And of course, we will always say, well, talk to the reporter. You should talk to the reporter on this.

But sometimes there have been pressures to say, well, this would just be so harmful if the story were written and it's... If you cross that bridge one time, your credibility is destroyed. If there's one time that you made an exception and you compromised on a principle, it now puts every story that every reporter at The Washington Post ever writes in doubt because they could say, well, that one story that wasn't accurate, they just kind of compromised on that one. So we want to be fair. We want to be honest. We will talk to our reporters. We'll talk to all the sources. If there's something they believe is factually inaccurate, they will listen to them. They will research it, but we won't compromise on that.

So what would be your advice then for an aspiring leader who is facing a serious challenge to his or her principles or noble causes and yet is perhaps reluctant to stand up and do something about it?

Well, one thing I do is, I guess it's a little bit self-serving to say this, but I tell people if they're in a situation like that, where they're at risk of being compromised and they're thinking about whether they're going to do something or not, I ask them, think about how it would look on the front page of The Washington Post. How would you like it to read and then think about if you really want to do that?