Peter Landesman Quotes

We all have our likes and our dislikes. But... when we're doing news - when we're doing the front-page news, not the back page, not the op-ed pages, but when we're doing the daily news, covering politics - it is our duty to be sure that we do not permit our prejudices to show. That is simply basic journalism.

I'm not in the judgment part of journalism.

I think the way to be an influential journalist is to be accurate and to be fair and to get things right and to really characterize things in an honest way, versus being really snarky or cheerleading.

When we are reporting the news, we make every effort to report it in as factual way as possible.

The first duty of a newspaper is to be accurate. If it be accurate, it follows that it is fair.

It's my job as a reporter to not be about the business of making friends or enemies but just be in the tireless pursuit of truth.

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.

Well, I don't know about objectivity, but I know for certain that it's always possible for a professional journalist who understands what he or she's up to to be fair, and that's the key word. Fairness to individuals, fairness to ideas, and to issues and whatever - that is critical, and that is also part and parcel of what the job.

A lot of journalism wants to have what they call objectivity without them having a commitment to pursuing the truth, but that doesn't work. Objectivity requires belief in and a commitment toward pursuing the truth - having an object outside of our personal point of view.

If there's anything that's important to a reporter, it is integrity. It is credibility.

We are a fact-gathering organization only. We don't clear anybody. We don't condemn anybody.

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.

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.

Profiles aren't journalism.

In the end, we journalists try - or should try - to be the first impartial witnesses of history. If we have any reason for our existence, the least must be our ability to report history as it happens so that no one can say: 'we didn't know - no one told us.'

A journalists's job is not to be balanced. It is to be accurate.

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.

The news is best when it's serious.

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

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.

You have to be careful not to go overboard. How do you balance what is clearly great television with good journalism?

I tell the truth. That's my training as a reporter.

I'm not in the business of being 'friendly.' First and foremost, I'm a journalist. My business is the truth. Now, I happen to be other things, too - a pop-culture phenomenon, the most in-demand speaker on the campus lecture circuit, whatever. But I believe in facts.

There has been far too much of journalists deciding they are on the side of something and going out to get the story, instead of truth seeking which is a different thing.

As for being an objective journalist? That's easy. I want what everyone else wants: the truth.