Quotes About Reporting

There's no question that sources sometimes have interests aside from the truth when they talk to reporters. That's why reporters have to very aggressively report against their own theses and against their initial information.

Journalism: an ability to meet the challenge of filling the space.

...as no one can be just without love, so no one can truly report without understanding.

Surprisingly, the book that influenced me was not written by someone in the thinking business but by a journalist: William Shirer's Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, 1934–1941. Shirer was a radio correspondent, famous for his book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

Having invited these performances in the first place, the media justified covering them because they were receiving media attention... The result was to make of modern society one giant Heisenberg effect in which the media were not really reporting what people did; they were reporting what people did to get media attention.

In the Laundry we supposedly pride ourselves on our procedures. We've got procedures for breaking and entering offices, procedures for reporting a shortage of paper clips, procedures for summoning demons from the vasty deeps, and procedures for writing procedures. We may actually be on track to be the world's first ISO-9000 total-quality-certified intelligence agency.

When facts are treated as if they were opinions, when there is no universal standard by which to determine truth in law, in science, in scholarship, or in the reporting of events of the day, the world becomes a place where lies become true, where people can believe what they want to believe, where there is no possibility of reaching any conclusion not predetermined by those who interpret the official, divinely inspired text.

When I'm anchoring, I miss chasing stories in the field.

A good journalist is modest; his only job is simple: to decide what counts as news.

I find it interesting, the different rules that apply to journalism and drama, even though journalism has become more and more about entertainment, and entertainment has become more and more about journalism.

Let us, rather, gather facts, all the facts, regardless of aesthetic appeal or theoretical social worth, and spread those facts before us not as the soothsayer spreads the innards of a turkey but as a newspaper spreads its columns. Let us be journalists, then. And like all good journalists, we shall present our facts in an order that will satisfy the famous five W's: wow, whoopee, wahoo, why-not and whew.

I also worry that my reporting will become this deluge of tragedy for people, who like myself, unable or uncertain of what to do, let it wash over them. Some African journalists call it poverty porn—stories or images of intense suffering designed solely for emotional impact, but often have the effect of shutting people down rather than helping them step up.

Laziness has become the chief characteristic of journalism, displacing incompetence.

casualty reports on either side are never accurate, seldom truthful, and in most cases deliberately falsified.

Journalism has already come to be the first power in the land.

Everything you read in the newspapers is absolutely true, except for that rare story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge.

Journalism is literature in a hurry.

It is a newspaper's duty to print the news and raise hell.

What you see is news, what you know is background, what you feel is opinion.

Newspapers are the world's mirrors.

Lieutenant Dallas has just given you a brief demonstration of why she's one of the most valuable assets of the NYPSD. She observes, deduces, and reports with accuracy.

Obwohl diese afrikanischen Militärbanden oft nicht größer oder mächtiger sind als die organisierten kriminellen Banden in Asien oder Osteuropa, wird über ihre Aktivitäten in den Medien - sogar in den westlichen Medien - unter der Rubrik Politik (Geschehen aus aller Welt) respektvoll berichtet, statt unter der Rubrik Verbrechen.

From Obama's perspective, truth was what he said it was. The reason he despised Fox News, the nation's highest-rated cable news channel, was that Fox alone among the news networks evaluated the validity of the White House narrative. In fact, on more than a few occasions, Benghazi included, Fox's reporting showed the administration's account of events to be pure hogwash. That rankled, and a wounded Obama struck back.

When a reporter sits down at the typewriter, he's nobody's friend.