Alex Gibney Quotes

Art is art, and journalism is journalism.

I think independent filmmakers, documentary filmmakers - they are journalists.

What's great about documentary, it seems to me, is that it can be experimental filmmaking. You have a license to do a lot of diverse things under the umbrella of 'documentary.'

Honesty works against you in the entertainment field. I try to be a journalist and a documentarian, but that doesn't mean that people are going to embrace it at the moment. The point is I'm leaving the mark of my hysteria and the political hysteria, and that's it... I can only do what I do.

If I feel like I haven't really tapped into the essence of the story when I do an assignment, I may revisit it on my own, and that's when I feel freer to add my imagination. But I think that if you feel imaginatively towards a subject, you really shouldn't do it in a journalistic context, because then you're just fabricating, and that's crazy.

Documentary people have to know that, particularly nowadays, they have to be on a mission. And part of the mission is to - is to be like good journalists: search for the truth, have an open mind, listen to as much as you can of different sides of things.

I think that if you feel imaginatively towards a subject, you really shouldn't do it in a journalistic context, because then you're just fabricating, and that's crazy.

A lot of college graduates approach me about becoming screenwriters. I tell them, 'Do not become a screenwriter, become a journalist,' because journalists go into worlds that are not their own. Kids who go to Hollywood write coming-of-age stories for their first scripts, about what happened to them when they were sixteen. Then they write the summer camp script. At the age of twenty-three they haven't produced anything, and that's the end of the career.

I would love for us to get back to a place in this country where we have real journalists, where we have real news reporting.

Art is where we make a stand. If we don't make it there, freedom of expression is lost for everyone - for artists, for journalists, and for everyday people.

The job of the press is to defend their institution, hold the government accountable and freely report and gather information.

I've met many journalists who impress me with their ability to play it straight. I think they're the exception to the rule.

Journalism combines adventure with culture.

No reporter of my generation, whatever his genius, ever really rated spats and a walking stick until he had covered both a lynching and a revolution.

The only thing which can keep journalism alive - journalism, which is born of the moment, serves the moment, and, as a rule, dies with the moment - is - again the Stevensonian secret! - charm.

Given the multiple crises we are living through, investigative journalism is all the more important.

Being a journalist seemed the ideal way of both having a job and experiencing the world, especially for anyone with a sense of adventure.

I had grown up as a feature writer, and basically my career had been in The National Lampoon and as a magazine editor, and I'd never been a reporter.

Journalism, to me, is just another drug - a free ride to scenes I'd probably miss if I stayed straight.

A TV show can't hold people and institutions to account like good journalism can.

Working as a journalist is exactly like being a wallflower at an orgy.

No real journalist makes $5 million a year... Those in power fear and dislike real journalists.

Being a reporter is as much a diagnosis as a job description.

I believe journalism is coming to be regarded as quite a respectable occupation for gentlemen nowadays.

[On journalists:] We are a noisy, imperfect lot, struggling to scribble what has been called the first draft of history.