"I would listen to how they told the story, to what elements they used, to how it sounded, and that's who I patterned myself after, the people who were on CBS News"
About this Quote
Apprenticeship, for Ed Bradley, wasn’t a misty-eyed calling. It was an act of close listening. The quote reads like a craftsman describing his tools: story shape, selected details, sonic texture. He’s not talking about “truth” as an abstract virtue; he’s talking about the deliverable - the way authority gets built on air, syllable by syllable. In broadcast journalism, credibility isn’t only what you know. It’s how you sound knowing it.
The intent is quietly pragmatic: Bradley is naming his model and, by extension, the ladder he climbed. “Patterned myself after” signals aspiration, but also discipline. He’s admitting that journalistic voice is learned, not innate. The subtext is sharper: if your storytelling choices can be studied, they can be engineered. That’s both reassuring (standards exist) and faintly unnerving (performance is part of the product).
“People who were on CBS News” isn’t just a workplace reference; it’s an emblem of a specific era when a few networks functioned as national referees. Bradley’s attention to “how it sounded” points to the power and peril of that period: a polished cadence could confer legitimacy, smooth over uncertainty, even mask bias. Coming from Bradley - a Black journalist who became one of the defining faces of 60 Minutes - the line also carries a coded historical weight. To enter that club, you didn’t just report well; you had to master the network’s language of seriousness.
The quote honors imitation as a route to excellence, while exposing the medium’s central tension: journalism as public service, delivered through a style that has to persuade before it can inform.
The intent is quietly pragmatic: Bradley is naming his model and, by extension, the ladder he climbed. “Patterned myself after” signals aspiration, but also discipline. He’s admitting that journalistic voice is learned, not innate. The subtext is sharper: if your storytelling choices can be studied, they can be engineered. That’s both reassuring (standards exist) and faintly unnerving (performance is part of the product).
“People who were on CBS News” isn’t just a workplace reference; it’s an emblem of a specific era when a few networks functioned as national referees. Bradley’s attention to “how it sounded” points to the power and peril of that period: a polished cadence could confer legitimacy, smooth over uncertainty, even mask bias. Coming from Bradley - a Black journalist who became one of the defining faces of 60 Minutes - the line also carries a coded historical weight. To enter that club, you didn’t just report well; you had to master the network’s language of seriousness.
The quote honors imitation as a route to excellence, while exposing the medium’s central tension: journalism as public service, delivered through a style that has to persuade before it can inform.
Quote Details
| Topic | Learning |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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