Quotes About Reporting

I'm a journalist, not an advocate, so I approached researching and writing the book the same way that I do any other reporting. But when you're writing for yourself, you have a little more room to say what you think.

Sideline reporting was a great way to be a part of the game and develop relationships, but it's no big secret that it's relatively limiting.

Right-wing media and politicians are looking for any opportunity to be critical of the reporters who are here. Some reporters make judgments, but that is not my style. I present both sides and report what I see with my own eyes.

No company that I ever hacked into reported any damages, which they were required to do for significant losses.

Since signing up to Think Act Report, the majority of members are taking more action and publishing more information on gender equality.

Independent media can go to where the silence is and break the sound barrier, doing what the corporate networks refuse to do.

Objective journalism and an opinion column are about as similar as the Bible and Playboy magazine.

If we were in a similar circumstance in the future I would want to make sure that our reporting was at least as diverse as it was during this most recent war.

The news business is simple, but it's not easy to do well.

To be conscious means not simply to be, but to be reported, known, to have awareness of one's being added to that being.

Conservatives have managed to turn the phrase "mainstream media," or "lame stream media," as that noted arbiter of intellectual rigor, Sarah Palin, called it, into a pejorative. But what is mainstream media? It's the journalism that believes in standards, strives to report facts, and has a professional standard to correct errors. It's the news the majority of Americans consume.

Today the term is still used to describe journalism

I would gather information and have to give it to somebody else and not get the byline.

I used to cover the environment, and it does have the advantage of the fact that when you call people up and ask them questions, their first instinct is not to lie to you.

The fact is, the media never gets off the interstate unless there's a major explosion.

When the world of officialdom skips over the natural process of competition, it leads to disaster; empty talk about political correctness without seeking truth from facts also leads to disaster; prohibiting people from speaking the truth and the media from reporting the truth leads to disaster; and now we are tasting the fruits of these disasters, one by one.

I've used pseudonyms, in some instances because of my source's legal commitments, in others to avoid gratuitous harm to the people mentioned. When I have disguised an individual, I have so indicated. Other than changing names and, in two instances, some telltale details about the company, I have reported what actually happened.

Dean Owen did what a lot of reporters seem to have forgotten how to do these days, he asked the people who were there that awful day what they saw and how they felt. This is a must-read for anyone who wants a better understanding of what happened on the weekend that America lost its innocence. A terrific read.

But I do wish some of these young reporters had the opportunity I had to work more closely with editors who could help them shape a story and make it better. "They still get edited, but not the way I worked with editors every step of the way on a story—it was the way we all learned the craft in those days. Today we just don't have that many people.

The scarcest resource in journalism now is attention span.

Using these unnamed sources, if done properly, carefully and fairly, provides more accountability in government.

Many people have their reputations as reporters and analysts because they are on television, batting around conventional wisdom. A lot of these people have never reported a story.

I think people are smart enough to sort it out. They know when they're watching one of these food fight shows where journalists sit around and yell and scream at each other, versus serious issue reporting.

At the end of the day, the information is packaged and a report will be e-mailed to you. It will show you everything—every Web site visited, every e-mail sent or received, every instant message. If Adam does a PowerPoint or creates a Word document, it will show you that too. Everything. You could watch him live-time if you want.