Carl Bernstein Quotes

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

I would never have been a good reporter because I am not accurate regarding facts.

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.

Science doesn't care, by and large, what the answers are. It's only interested in getting the right answer. And journalism should be very much that way.

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.

If you're a journalist - and I think, on some level, I'm a journalist, and proud to be a journalist, or a documentarian, however you want to describe it - part of what I do has to be the pursuit of the truth.

The responsibility that I feel is to do as good a job as a journalist as I can possibly do.

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

The most important thing about my profession is finding the truth, finding the reality of these shows.

Scepticism is a necessary and vital part of the journalist's toolkit. But when scepticism becomes cynicism it can close off thought and block the search for truth.

If uncovering the truth is the greatest challenge of nonfiction writing, it is also the greatest reward.

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

If journalism is good, it is controversial, by its nature.

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

The news and truth are not the same thing.

Our job is to get as close to the verified truth as is possible.

I have long argued that no one should be allowed to write opinion without spending years as a reporter - nothing like interviewing all four eyewitnesses to an automobile accident and then trying to write an accurate account of what happened.

When you work at 'The Wall Street Journal,' the coins of the realm are truth and trust - the latter flowing exclusively from the former.