Quotes About Reporting

It had been an article of my creed. The human condition being what it was, let them fight, let them love, let them murder, I would not be involved. My fellow journalists called themselves correspondents; I preferred the title of reporter. I wrote what I saw. I took no action—even an opinion is a kind of action.

Wouldn't we all do better not trying to understand, accepting the fact that no human being will ever understand another, not a wife a husband, a lover a mistress, nor a parent a child? Perhaps that's why men have invented God—a being capable of understanding. Perhaps if I wanted to be understood or to understand I would bamboozle myself into belief, but I am a reporter; God exists only for leader-writers.

Oh. Does Mississippi have some kind of grave-desecration statute? I know they differ from state to state." "Mississippi does, thank God. Anybody who comes across human remains in this state must report them. And a discovery like that stops whatever's going on around it. Even major construction. Doesn't matter whether the land is public or private.

I don't think journalists in World War II were objective about the Nazis, and I don't think they should have been.

If there is one way that I would sum up what the 2016 election was on cable news, it was world-class journalists interviewing morons.

After spending over 15 years reporting in these worlds and getting to meet these traffickers, drug dealers, and other people that are really stereotyped in our society, I've come to realize the uncomfortable truth that most are not very different from us.

The journalists are so devoted to Obama. They are such sycophants that they're worried about access.

As a journalist, you're always worried, 'Did I get the full story?'

It's a journalist's job to be a witness to history. We're not there to worry about ourselves. We're there to try and get as near as we can, in an imperfect world, to the truth and get the truth out.

I worry that we're not getting enough of the news that we need to make informed judgments as citizens.

Richard Nixon was the best thing that ever happened to journalism. I mean this guy was wonderful. Just when you thought he could get no worse, he got worse.

It's totally mistaken to suppose that an armed escort is going to give a journalist any protection - on the contrary, journalists who turn up surrounded by armed personnel are just turning themselves into targets and in even worse danger.

In the '70s, the newspaper guild managed to get people paid what they were worth, but the reporters suddenly became middle class. It's much more respectable, more uptight, and everyone speaks in guarded tones. And the writing isn't as good. We always had guys who were failed poets and failed novelists who did it to eat.

I have been active as a writer and journalist for nearly forty years. But the number of great reporters I have run across in that time would make, as they say, a slim book. Without question, the top man on my list would be Tommy Thompson.

Al Jazeera is not a tool of revolution. We do not create revolutions. However, when something of that magnitude happens, we are at the center of the coverage.

You can't be a reporter using Google. It can be a tool. But you have to get out of the house.

Textbook journalism everywhere in the world has always frowned upon the sting as a tool of reporting.

One in five of our customers books for business. But it's scaling very fast. As a result, we have tools for medium or small-sized companies to allow them set their price and give basic reporting functionality.

Yes, the disruption of the Internet can be blamed for the destruction of the business model that once made journalism a thriving, well-paying enterprise, but it has also created an array of new tools for reporting. Somebody will eventually figure out how to make online newspapers profitable - I hope.

I don't think journalism changes. It's about digging into stories and telling them well. The basic tenets of great reporting stay the same while things around it change. Technology has made reporting easier, but it has also caused job loss. Social media has increased discussion around topics, but it has its own challenges at times.

Pandering to the scandal hungry public is a total lack of responsible journalism.

Journalism is the protection between people and any sort of totalitarian rule. That's why my hero, admittedly a flawed one, is a journalist.

at some point, we end up shifting focus to the freak show on the fringes of the story. And everybody loves a freak show. Then we start reporting the freak shows, even when there's no real story attached.

I decided to start a medical training program for freelancers, only freelancers. They're the ones who are doing most of the combat reporting. They're taking most of the risks. They're absorbing most of the casualties. And they're the most underserved and under-resourced of everyone in the entire news business.