David Strathairn Quotes

I started off wanting very much to be a newscaster.

All they expected me to do was rip and read the wire 'leads,' without doing any original reporting. It was pretty basic, but gave me a taste of how to combine my love of politics and broadcasting.

I give Cronkite a whole lot of credit.

There are a lot of people who think our job is to reassure the public every night that their home, their community and their nation is safe. I don't subscribe to that at all. I subscribe to leaving people with essentially … a rough draft of history. Some days it's reassuring, some days it's absolutely destructive.

Getting involved in a newsroom and seeing how it operated and the urgency of live television really got my attention.

I started as a print reporter. I’m a journalist and that’s what I do. My function is an anchorperson, but it’s in a journalism context, and gravitas and coats and ties and haircuts and all that sort of stuff, I’ll leave to others. My thing is just to do my job the best way I know how and as I say I’m very fortunate to be able to do it the way I want to do it.

I think there are a lot of great journalists out there. I don't find much fault in the journalist in general; I think everybody would like to break a good story.

I think a lot of people in television news look at the cable networks with great envy.

Nobody in college races home and says, 'I can't wait to see the news! I can't wait to see who CBS is going to hire!'

What separated Ed Murrow from the rest of the pack was courage.

News is the backbone of our network; the main commodity and the main successes of Al Jazeera came out of our involvement in covering the news in the Middle East.

When I came to CBS it was the mother church. I mean that was - everybody wanted to go to work for CBS News.

Journalism is in fact history on the run.

In the days of Caesar, kings had fools and jesters. Now network presidents have anchormen.

The whole idea of television news or any kind of news is to inform people about things they need to know about.

I'm 68 and a half years old; I grew up with newspapers; I love newspapers; I love the news business. I started CNN; I'm a journalist and proud of it.

I like being involved in the lighter side of journalism because it serves a purpose, and it's fun. And I can keep my opinions off camera if I want.

I am a hard-news journalist. That is what I do.

I'm a journalist, so my friends are journalists: magazines, newspapers, even public radio. Nobody had their kids in public school.

In America journalism is apt to be regarded as an extension of history: in Britain, as an extension of conversation.

I like journalists.

Journalism: an ability to meet the challenge of filling the space.

I know of no more patriotic group than television journalists.

Meet the Press is not just another news show but is history in the making.

All the news that fits we print.