Quotes About Journalism

You can't have a free democracy if you don't have a free media that can provide vital and independent information to the people.

We need a free press. We must have it. It's vital.

In emerging democracies like Russia, in authoritarian states like Iran or even Yugoslavia, journalists play a vital role in civil society. In fact, they form the very basis of those new democracies and civil societies.

They cut about seven minutes from that broadcast, but it was still vital to the story's momentum.

Scepticism is a necessary and vital part of the journalist's toolkit. But when scepticism becomes cynicism it can close off thought and block the search for truth.

In essence, I see the value of journalism as resting in a twofold mission: informing the public of accurate and vital information, and its unique ability to provide a truly adversarial check on those in power.

Long before my days at ESPN, the 'Philadelphia Inquirer,' or the 'New York Daily News' before that, I was a student at Thomas A. Edison Vocational and Technical High.

At school, a careers adviser asked me what I wanted to be, and I said 'fashion journalist,' so writing for 'Vogue' has provided me with the opportunity to fulfill a dream.

My first thought when I started in journalism is that I wanted to work for a fashion publication like 'Vogue' or 'Glamour.'

I think that having a job in journalism, despite all of the changes, is still a fantastic way to be - make a living observing your society and having a chance to use your voice.

As Americans, we rightfully place tremendous value on having a free and independent press. Our role as journalists is to give voice to the voiceless, and hold our leaders and institutions accountable. But the circle is only completed when that information is consumed by a free-thinking and engaged audience.

Some people call it the 'Al Jazeera spirit' - courage, re-thinking authority, giving a voice to the voiceless. We have never been favored by the authority. The human being is the center of our editorial policy. We are not a TV station that rushes after stars, big names, press conferences, hand-shake journalism.

From the late David Broder on down, the most powerful and influential of the great Washington columnists and journalists tend to cultivate the driest, least lively voices possible.

Where are reliable journalism and reliable investigative voices going to come from? I love the days of old - the Walter Cronkites, the Dan Rathers.

With newspapers cutting foreign bureaus and budgets shrinking for long-form, investigative journalism, documentary filmmakers are often filling a void nowadays in the media landscape with their ability to spend time with their stories and subjects.

Back in the 1980s, the 'News of the World' had specialised in digging into the privacy of criminals. In the 1990s, enriched by the excavation of Princess Diana's volatile life, they had widened their work to mine the activities of any celebrity, any public figure.

To me, politics is culture. I became a journalist, and later a filmmaker, to get to know my new country and my volatile place in it as a gay, undocumented Filipino-American.

Most people, when they meet me, one of the first things they say is, 'Why would you voluntarily subject yourself to war? Why would you go into these places where you know there's a risk of getting killed?'

The ferociousness of some of the media is shocking.

I want my kids to grow up in a country where, you know, we can still shout questions at the president.

I'd love to sit down with Barbara Walters. She's always asking people about their personal lives. I'd like to see how she likes it.

These people I cover, I want to do right by them. Doing right by them doesn't always mean agreeing with me or being happy with me, but it means being fair to them and giving their voice space.

In a dynamic that's familiar in our own time, hostility from the journalists of the East convinced a number of middle Americans that a cause under such assault must have something to recommend it.

in our line of work the more humiliated a person is, the more viral the story tends to go. Shame can factor large in the life of a journalist—the personal avoidance of it and the professional bestowing of it onto others.