Charles Osgood Quotes

Broadsheets can be scathing. But I have respect for broadsheet journalists because they haven't succumbed to degrading themselves, to writing pidgin English with all these terrible colloquialisms, the phrasing of which is just, like, embarrassing.

Look, everybody in journalism has a reputation of sorts.

I've had a lot of fun, and when I talk to kids in journalism schools, I say, look, I know what the journalism teachers tell you that this is a great way to perform public service and all that, but I say the main reason, if you decide what you want to do is be a reporter, the main reason you want to do it is because it's just so much fun.

Journalism: A profession whose business is to explain to others what it personally does not understand.

When I was in journalism school, you were taught to be completely objective. But we don't see that anymore.

I'm a lousy journalist.

In any event, the proper question isn't what a journalist thinks is relevant but what his or her audience thinks is relevant. Denying people information they would find useful because you think they shouldn't find it useful is censorship, not journalism.

Rereading A.J. Liebling carries me happily back to an age when all good journalists knew they had plenty to be modest about, and were.

I would like to know that when I read the paper in the morning, it's telling me something that actually happened, and I think the vast majority of journalists want the same thing.

The first duty of a newspaper is to be accurate. If it be accurate, it follows that it is fair.

I think everyone has their own style in journalism. Look, I'm a girl from the South! Sometimes I laugh. Someone can pejoratively call it giggling. But if you look at the body of my work, I ask lots of hard questions and break a lot of hard news.

I studied journalism at The University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill. I did my graduate work at Emerson in Boston, and I was actually a reporter for a year in New York and New Jersey. It dawned on me that I wasn't cut out for that line of work. I mean... there's a certain thing that really good reports have that I just didn't.

I think every journalist understands when they are the beneficiary of hot information that, yes, they have a scoop, but they're also being used. Part of your responsibility as a journalist is to tell the story of why that information is coming to you, consistent with the ground rules of your sourcing.

I liked journalism and thought it was important, certainly more important than fiction. I'd probably still be doing it if I hadn't been elbowed out.

I do think that there are gray lines of morality in a newsroom, when it comes to some stories. The best-intentioned journalist still has a difficult mission, to try to boil down people.

'The Guardian,' with its deep journalistic traditions, is careful about context and explanation. It sees itself as a gatekeeper, and it worries about consequences.

Some in journalism consider themselves apart from and to some extent above the people they purport to serve.

You know, I was at CBS News for 28 years. I may have run an unidentified source. Frankly, I don't remember.

From forty years' experience of the wretched guess-work of the newspapers of what is not done in the open daylight, and of their falsehood even as to that, I rarely think them worth reading, and almost never worth notice.

As anchorman of the CBS Evening News, I signed off my nightly broadcasts for nearly two decades with a simple statement: 'And that's the way it is.' To me, that encapsulates the newsman's highest ideal: to report the facts as he sees them, without regard for the consequences or controversy that may ensue.

I know Fox News is the target of criticism but we take it in stride. Our No. 1 goal is to be accurate.

It's the broadcaster's dilemma. Are we true journalists? I don't know if I am or not.

I just don't understand why people decide to be journalists if they're not willing to investigate hard-hitting news stories.

I don't believe reporters are supposed to be the story. That's how I was trained.

The lead story on MSNBC was the news that there was nothing new to report in the Gary Condit story. So remember when there is nothing new to report, MSNBC will be the station not to report it first.