Bill Walsh Quotes

My goal was never to withhold information; my goal was to make sure everything was accurate, and frequently it wasn't.

You don't want to come out with anything that's wrong, of course, in a scientific, you know, a major scientific announcement, and so you're being so careful trying to check, well maybe it's this, maybe it's that, you're looking at every possible thing.

I have to be careful. My readers are very detail-oriented, and if I make a mistake they'll call me on it.

During the work, you have to be sure that you haven't left any holes, that you've captured everything, because afterwards it will be too late.

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

I think there are ways that graduate students can fact-check their work. I think there are ways that we can do this that don't require massive amounts of resources.

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

Every book has mistakes in them, every one. There's never been a book published without mistakes.

Well, one thing I'm really interested in, when I'm writing, is being accurate.

I'm pretty rigorous about the drafts I turn in. I don't turn in something that's so ungodly they go, 'What the hell is this?'

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

I will never repeat something verbatim on the air unless I know it's accurate. And when you go to the source, sometimes there's a better story beyond the original story. That happens all the time.

I can't think of a major story that we have broken that was incorrect. But we have had to correct some things that were false; we have had to retract things.

Machines aren't replacing proofreaders at all. Copy editors, who proofread and much, much more, use spellcheck as a tool but read every word that appears in the paper.

Watch every detail that affects the accuracy of your work.

There are checks and balances in science. There's somebody checking the people doing the science, and then there's somebody who checks the checkers and somebody who checks the checker's checkers.

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.

As I understand it, Lacey has dismissed all of the fact checkers.

I don't edit information, I follow it.

I think the idea of fact-checking, I think the idea that you come up through a system where you know how to cover night cops, and then you go on, and you go on to various beats, including writing obituaries, and you get names right, you know how to spell them, really has some advantages to it.

Get the facts, or the facts will get you. And when you get them, get them right, or they will get you wrong.

I cite my vouchers to every passage and I have done my utmost, first to find out the truth, and then to relate it in the clearest order. I have laboured after accuracy; and yet I dare not say that I am without mistake; nor do I desire the reader to conceal any he may possibly find.

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

Everybody needs an editor.

So much crap passes as information that not only does the audience sometimes miss the distinction between news and crap, the editors sometimes miss the distinction.