Michael Ignatieff Quotes

Good journalism, I think, represents life and if you try to organize something too neatly it usually blows up in your face and doesn't really happen the way you want it to.

Journalism is not an exact science. At best it i a crude art.

Journalists prize independence - not teamwork.

Journalists aren't supposed to be cheerleaders.

Journalism is a craft that takes years to learn. It's like golf. You never get it right all the time. It's a game of fewer errors, better facts, and better reporting.

I was once a journalist. And I think of myself as a journalist, and that's it. You tell the truth. I even wrote a book called 'The Truth'.

Journalism is always the art of the incomplete. You get bits and pieces.

The dirty little secret of journalism is that it really isn't a profession, it's a craft. All you need is a telephone and a conscience and you're all set.

Whenever you're reporting, there's always something you can't say or write, but the questions, you always want to get as close to that line as possible. You want to ask the tough questions.

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.

Journalists hold themselves apart, and above, the common person. They have rules designed to ensure their objectivity and impartiality.

I'm an expert on the NewsHour and it isn't how I practice journalism. I am not involved in the story. I serve only as a reporter or someone asking questions. I am not the story.

A good journalist is not the one that writes what people say, but the one that writes what he is supposed to write.

A good newspaper is never nearly good enough but a lousy newspaper is a joy forever.

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

A news sense is really a sense of what is important, what is vital, what has color and life — what people are interested in. That's journalism.

It's about being right and trying to get the facts and get the story right, and inform, you know, the readership or the viewership. And there are some reporters that do that.

My job is to cover the news and do it accurately and fair. And we do.

The most profound lessons about journalism I've learned have been taught to me by the people I've covered.

The reporting has always been what drives me.

Journalism is not writing.

For somebody who is a journalist, I can be awfully unobservant sometimes.

As a journalist, the details always tell the story.

See, I have no journalism in my background, so I wasn't practised at research or writing non-fiction, nor at handling the truth in a journalistic way. Journalists know when to call a halt and write something, but I kept on looking for answers.

From journalism I learned to write under pressure, to work with deadlines, to have limited space and time, to conduct and interview, to find information, to research, and above all, to use language as efficiently as possible and to remember always that there is a reader out there.