Tom Brokaw Quotes

Profiles aren't journalism.

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.

I love journalism.

I am interested in the press and what they do.

Journalism is not writing.

There's an old saw about journalism that the more you know about a subject, the less sense reporting about it makes.

I'm not an advocacy journalist - that's not what I do. My role in journalism is to be able to engage the most interesting people with the best ideas.

We in the media should be breaking the news and not making the news.

I'm a journalism junkie.

I don't think much of the journalism that I see.

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

My function is, as objectively and accurately as I can, to present reality to people out there, and doing that as quickly as we do is quite difficult enough, thank you.

People who think there is something pedestrian about journalism are just ignorant.

No ideas and the ability to express them - that's a journalist.

This much we know: Journalism is not a precise science. It's, on its best day, is a crude art. We make mistakes; I make mistakes. With more than 50 years as a journalist, I have at least had the opportunity to blow more stories, make more mistakes than maybe anybody in television.

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.

Journalism keeps you planted in the earth.

'Reality' is a notion that journalists take for granted.

I know of no more patriotic group than television journalists.

News is the first rough draft of history.

In this Day the secrets of the earth are laid bare before the eyes of men. The pages of swiftly-appearing newspapers are indeed the mirror of the world. They reflect the deeds and the pursuits of diverse peoples and kindreds. They both reflect them and make them known. They are a mirror endowed with hearing, sight and speech. This is an amazing and potent phenomenon. However, it behooveth the writers thereof to be purged from the promptings of evil passions and desires and to be attired with the raiment of justice and equity. They should enquire into situations as much as possible and ascertain the facts, then set them down in writing.

The news and truth are not the same thing.

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

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.

I'm a journalist. I've been a journalist ever since I was 18.