Jim Lehrer Quotes

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.

I think journalism gets measured by the quality of information it presents, not the drama or the pyrotechnics associated with us.

Journalists prize independence - not teamwork.

Journalism: A profession whose business is to explain to others what it personally does not understand.

I said that I'm only there to write the truth, I'm not going to cover anything up, but I'll put everything in context and get as close to the truth of this person as I can.

Once we thought, journalists and readers alike, that if we put together enough 'facts' and gave them a fast stir, we would come up with something that, at least by the standards of short-order cooks, could be called the truth.

I don't believe that there's such a thing as objectivity in much of journalism, but I think there is a serious effort to and a regard for facts and into taking that stuff seriously is very important to the public discourse and it's very important to democracy.

Journalism is a flawed profession, but it has a self-correcting mechanism. The rule of journalism is: talk to everybody.

I reject the idea that journalists are messengers of the truth. It’s arrogant. I think journalism is a search for the little relative truths that at best keep us relatively sane.

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.

I'm not an expert on journalistic standards. I want to be clear on that.

The job of the press is to encourage debate, not to supply the public with information.

I have always been of the opinion that the right kind of journalism is a critical part of our democracy.

To newspapers and publishing houses I urge the use of fact over fiction, freedom of the press, and responsibility at all times.

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

We're journalists, so our default position is we're not writing editorial. We're trying to bring information to readers, viewers, so that they can make up their own conclusions.

Journalism should be more like science. As far as possible, facts should be verifiable. If journalists want long-term credibility for their profession, they have to go in that direction. Have more respect for readers.

I don't think journalism changes. It's about digging into stories and telling them well. The basic tenets of great reporting stay the same while things around it change. Technology has made reporting easier, but it has also caused job loss. Social media has increased discussion around topics, but it has its own challenges at times.

I hate newspapermen. They come into camp and pick up their camp rumors and print them as facts. I regard them as spies, which, in truth, they are.

If you are a great news organization, you can't have the best obtainable version of the truth if your vision and your scale is reduced to a fraction of its former self.

Readers appreciate the truth. Why say, 'Some think a situation is a mess?' Based on my reporting, if a situation is a mess, then I say that. The truth is always what reporters tell each other when they get back to the newsroom.

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 news used to be to report facts and allow you to make the decision.

There's an old saw about journalism that the more you know about a subject, the less sense reporting about it makes.