George Akerlof Quotes

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.

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.

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.

As a reporter you tend to seek coherence from your subject or your source - it all needs to add up and make sense. In truth, in reality, there's often a great deal of murkiness and muddiness, confusion and contradiction.

In journalism, there has always been a tension between getting it first and getting it right.

I was once a journalist. And I think of myself as a journalist, and that's it. You tell the truth. I even wrote a book called 'The Truth'.

Many a good newspaper story has been ruined by over verification.

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

You're under pressure when you produce facts. You're working with facts in journalism, but you're under all kinds of formal constraints; there are expectations.

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.

Tricks you need to transform something which appears fantastic, unbelievable into something plausible, credible, those I learned from journalism. The key is to tell it straight. It is done by reporters and by country folk.

I think all good reporting is the same thing - the best attainable version of the truth.

Journalism is not an exact science. At best it i a crude art.

I think you get into trouble as an author and a journalist when, rather than owning the gaps, you try to elide them.

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.

My job is to tell the truth about what's happening as best I can.

More and more, journalism seems to have hopped out of Truth's pocket and crept into another.

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

I had a very strong background in journalism, so it's my instinct to try to be as fair and accurate as possible.

As a journalist, the details always tell the story.

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

Just because you read a report in the 'New York Times,' the 'Economist,' or, yes, 'The New Yorker' doesn't make it true. But we do know that a few people have evaluated that story with what strikes me as fairly objective standards of reason.

I hate newspapermen. They come into camp and pick up their camp rumors and print them as facts. I regard them as spies, which, in truth, they are.

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.

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.