Thomas Griffith Quotes

What passes for investigative journalism is finding somebody with their pants down - literally or otherwise.

If an investigative reporter finds out that someone has been robbing the store, that may be 'gotcha' journalism, but it's also good journalism.

We don't go into journalism to be popular. It is our job to seek the truth and put constant pressure on our leaders until we get answers.

The really tough thing would have been to decide to take Woodward and Bernstein off the story. They were carrying the coal for us - in that their stories were right.

I think that some of the greatest muckrakers and some of the greatest investigative journalists of all time had strong feelings about civil rights. There is a role for the journalist-advocate. And as long as you play your cards on the table, I think that's a role that we should allow.

I've been saying in the press that being a NY Post investigator reporter is an oxymoron.

Murrow covered something because it needed coverage. He wasn't trying to get an audience just for the sake of it.

Journalists must not be made accomplices by the secret service to solve its own problems.

And what it depends on, of course, is whether the story itself is worth the ethical compromise it requires and whether the competition is onto the story.

I pine for a return to the type of old-school journalism and the tough newspapermen and women of the Thirties.

But here's my point to the LA Times. If you had a serious story to run, if you thought there was serious misconduct, you don't wait until the Thursday before the Tuesday. You run it early.

Interviews, and hence interviewers, are there to help shed light, and to let viewers judge for themselves. We are not judges, juries, commentators or torturers - nor friends, either.

The mainstream media doesn't want to get into this because they don't want to know where this one goes.

It is the business of the journalist … to stand in permanent Opposition.

Journalists follow authority as sharks follow a liner, dining on the scraps that are thrown overboard.

The job of a political correspondent is the challenge the people in power. If you are in power, I will challenge you.

This role is designed to question the behavior of government officials on behalf of the public. I think people who have done this and all jobs in journalism have believed that.

Investigative reporting is not a way to make friends.

To have you turn your searchlight on Washington politics is better than anything our guardian angel could do for us—on earth at least.

Journalists like to give themselves credit for being on the hunt for 'the truth.' But if we embrace this undoubtedly noble but somewhat haughty interpretation of a calling, we inevitably become susceptible to slam dunk answers.

The only decent daily paper of record in France is the online 'Mediapart,' which exposes graft and corruption in high places and is feared by the establishment.

The journalist must do his work in a kind of deliberately induced state of moral anarchy.

I believe there are two kinds of journalists. One who sells a story by being creative, and one who sells a story by being sensationalist.

I will always treasure the nearly 3 years I spent working for James O'Keefe as an undercover journalist at Project Veritas.

The kind of in-depth investigative journalism we practice at 'Frontline' is thoughtful, rigorous, and time-intensive. It requires us to constantly seek untold stories and to give our producers and reporters the time and resources to dig into them deeply.