Al Michaels Quotes

As a journalist, you have to have multiple sources and verifiable science, and when you've done that and satisfied the most skeptical voice in your head, you have an obligation to ride through the streets - let people know what's going on.

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

In most daily journalism, you only fact-check something if it seems a little fishy.

Good reporting should have the same standard as in a courtroom - beyond a reasonable doubt.

Journalists who swallow the subject's account whole and publish it are not journalists but publicists.

If you are a journalist, check and double-check your sources. Don't just swallow what politicians tell you.

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

There's no question that sources sometimes have interests aside from the truth when they talk to reporters. That's why reporters have to very aggressively report against their own theses and against their initial information.

There have been many times when we have not run stories because we cannot get it verified.

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

My inclination, as an old-school, classically trained journalist, is not to go with a story unless I have it hard. It's not good enough to say something based on rumors that were flying around.

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.

Whenever you're reporting, there's always something you can't say or write, but the questions, you always want to get as close to that line as possible. You want to ask the tough questions.

I'm in the business, as a journalist, of asking tough questions.

Being a journalist, you write what you see. If we can't do that, what use are we? I turned years of training on myself.

My sense is that, when you look at what people such as former Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein have said over the years, you don't go with a story unless you have two independent sources to confirm it.

When we hear news, we should always wait for the sacrament of confirmation.

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

Whenever there's a big story with vast potential to get social media content and find out what's happening, your first object is to prod into that and then test it to see whether it's valid. If you don't do the second part, you're basically a bilge pump.

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.

Careful authors and journalists cultivate relationships with a wide variety of sources so as to avoid bad information or being led down an inaccurate path. Gossip columnists don't particularly care if the path is inaccurate, so long as it gets attention and results in more fuel for the fire.

If a journalist comes to you with a great story, one of the first questions you ask is how did you get it. How you got it is relevant to judging its accuracy and preparing yourself for any legal challenge.

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.

CNN is in the business of sussing out what is true and what is false.