Nicholas Kristof Quotes

I'm trying to correct what is wrong in journalism today: wasting users' time.

Everyone is free to express their opinions, but I think that journalists should do it with more responsibility. They lack accuracy.

If establishment journalists were to replicate actual stenography, it would be an improvement on most of the work they produce.

One of the most important disciplines in journalism is to challenge your working premises.

A common criticism of establishment journalists entails comparing them to stenographers, on the ground that most of them do little more than mindlessly write down and uncritically repeat what government officials say.

There are so many journalists out there, I hate to say it, who are lazy and don't do their research - and it shows.

People may expect too much of journalism. Not only do they expect it to be entertaining, they expect it to be true.

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.

Certainly in my own body of reporting, I was very acutely aware of the risk of any mischaracterized journalism and the need for anything I put out to be absolutely bulletproof.

It's CNN's bigger problem that CNN wants to deny reality. I, too, used to drink the Kool-Aid that it was a top journalism operation that reports without bias. Now that I'm outside the walls of traditional media, I know there is no such thing.

The most profound lessons about journalism I've learned have been taught to me by the people I've covered.

Most journalists are idiots.

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

When you are a journalist, you have a big responsibility towards your audience and it is important to respect that responsibility.

It matters that we have balance and facts and push people when they need to be pushed so that we can give the accurate, fair, balanced piece to the viewer, and then it's up to the viewer to be the judge.

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

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.

It's difficult for me, to look into eyes of a journalist and trust him to present it as you say.

I think that Twitter and YT and blogs are keeping media more honest. Everyone can be a journalist now. Everyone is a fact checker.

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

From journalism I learned to write under pressure, to work with deadlines, to have limited space and time, to conduct and interview, to find information, to research, and above all, to use language as efficiently as possible and to remember always that there is a reader out there.

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

It's all storytelling, you know. That's what journalism is all about.

There aren't enough good journalists. There are too many who really weren't groomed to be reporters and, as a result, some of the reporting is shallow.

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.