Robert Redford Quotes

There is no higher claim to journalistic integrity than going to jail to protect a source.

We have to protect all journalists, and journalists have to be allowed to do their jobs.

Well, thank God for a media that will ask questions.

Freedom of the press is not questioned when investigative journalism unearths scandals, But that does not mean that every classified state document should be made available to journalists.

I have always thought it morally unacceptable to kill stories, not to run stories, that people have risked their lives to get.

The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.

The press are the representative of the people and they have a right to know, but they don’t have the right to know right now…. There is an art to telling the truth slowly.

The best definition of journalism I have heard; to challenge authority - all authority - especially so when governments and politicians take us to war, when they have decided that they will kill and others will die.

The ability of the press to print their stories without the government trying to get them to betray their sources is as essential to a free press as the ink it is printed with. Otherwise, who will hold accountable those who hold power over us?

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

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 most important responsibility we have as journalists is to question those who are in power. I honestly believe that.

Journalism has a special, hallowed place for stories of its practitioners' persecution.

It is crazy to have Judith Miller in jail.

A key purpose of journalism is to provide an adversarial check on those who wield the greatest power by shining a light on what they do in the dark, and informing the public about those acts.

There is no country on earth with a stronger tradition of protecting the public's right to know.

Clearly independent journalists - domestic journalists - run a high risk if they dare to take on serious investigative work.

Journalism is irrepressible. It can't be taken away.

CBS fought very hard on this because it believed and believes that there's a principle at stake here. The principle is that Dan Rather doesn't work for the police, and that people that speak to Dan Rather understand that he's a journalist and not a police agent.

It is the role of good journalism to take on powerful abusers, and when powerful abusers are taken on, there's always a bad reaction. So we see that controversy, and we believe that is a good thing to engage in.

We are all Julian Assange. Serious reporters discuss classified information every day - go to any Washington or New York dinner party where real journalists are present, and you will hear discussion of leaked or classified information. That is journalists' job in a free society.

I happen to believe that any legitimate news organization in the world would do that interview. And if the United States is going to be a proponent of a free press, it has to walk the walk.

What would this country be like without the press prying to find out what the government is doing?

Thank God we have a press that tells us what you guys are doing.

The first duty of the Press is to obtain the earliest and most correct intelligence of the time, and instantly, by disclosing them to make them the common property of the nation.