Bob Franken

I’m about to be perhaps the one millionth news type to comment on the passing of Washington Post legend Ben Bradlee. I’ll be one of the few who acknowledges that I didn’t know him very well, our conversations limited to a few encounters in the same green room, where we never got much past platitudes. I am, however, in full agreement with those who lionize him in death as the personification of the highest ideals in journalism.

He was fanatical about building air-tight stories — nothing less, based on facts, tediously accumulated by hard work with no shortcuts. We saw that in his most celebrate...