Brian Stelter Quotes

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.

You can never get all the facts from just one newspaper, and unless you have all the facts, you cannot make proper judgements about what is going on.

Scepticism is as important for a good journalist as it is for a good scientist.

The men with the muckrakes are often indispensable but only if they know when to stop raking muck.

You're constantly asking yourself, 'Am I doing enough? Am I living up to this moment? Am I asking the toughest questions of the president to make sure we're continuing to do our job to hold him accountable for his words and his promises?'

I don't take anything that I read in the newspaper at face value on either side - from anybody.

In the most polarized and passionate, the most angry and aggressive news environment in recent memory, my job as a journalist requires me - often - to push back in live interviews against comments that are unfair, untrue, or leave me thinking, 'Is this seriously happening right now?'

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.

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

I'd rather see folks doubt what's true than accept what isn't.

When you practice reporting for as long as I have, you keep yourself at a distance from True Believers. Either conservatives or liberals or Democrats or Republicans.

I believe there's too little patience and context to many of the investigations I read or see on television.

I read Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, Reader's Digest... I read some responsible journalism, and from that, I form my own opinions. I also happen to be intelligent, and I question everything.

I don't think the intelligence reports are all that hot. Some days I get more out of New York Times.

In the end, we journalists try - or should try - to be the first impartial witnesses of history. If we have any reason for our existence, the least must be our ability to report history as it happens so that no one can say: 'we didn't know - no one told us.'

I ask you to believe nothing that you cannot verify for yourself.

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

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.

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.

Clearly, you can't believe everything you read in the press.

I have long argued that no one should be allowed to write opinion without spending years as a reporter - nothing like interviewing all four eyewitnesses to an automobile accident and then trying to write an accurate account of what happened.

We have rights in America. In tandem with those rights, we have responsibility. Whatever type of journalist we are, whether it be in the entertainment business, or as professional journalists, we always have the consequences of the way we present fact and information.

I give my honest opinion, whether it's right or wrong, but it's an opinion that I'll make.

My responsibility is to make judgments about hard, complex issues that I believe to be right.

You can't believe everything that's written or reported in the media.