Melvin Maddocks Quotes

If establishment journalists were to replicate actual stenography, it would be an improvement on most of the work they produce.

The more servile a reporter is toward his sources, the more authoritative he can appear in print.

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

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.

In this day and age, much of journalism is about right or left, conservative or liberal, and 'The Observer' is just that: an observer. It is about truth.

I think journalism gets measured by the quality of information it presents, not the drama or the pyrotechnics associated with us.

Too often reporters covering scientific debates give fringe views equal weight in a misguided attempt to achieve balance.

I don't want to paint everybody with the same broad brush. But I do think that the majority of folks now in the briefing room, that are going into journalism - they're not there for the facts and the pursuit of the truth.

Journalists who swallow the subject's account whole and publish it are not journalists but publicists.

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

We journalists make it a point to know very little about an extremely wide variety of topics; this is how we stay objective.

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

I respect and empathize with reporters and editors who must compete in today's environment. And I know full well that when I've been covering campaigns, which I still do, I've made my mistakes and have been far from perfect.

There aren't enough good journalists. There are too many who really weren't groomed to be reporters and, as a result, some of the reporting is shallow.

Right-wing media and politicians are looking for any opportunity to be critical of the reporters who are here. Some reporters make judgments, but that is not my style. I present both sides and report what I see with my own eyes.

When we are reporting the news, we make every effort to report it in as factual way as possible.

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

I mean, journalism is very detailed... you try to get down in the weeds and sort out exactly what happened. And I don't think that a feature film is really a place where that happens.

You're under pressure when you produce facts. You're working with facts in journalism, but you're under all kinds of formal constraints; there are expectations.

It's a journalist's job to be a witness to history. We're not there to worry about ourselves. We're there to try and get as near as we can, in an imperfect world, to the truth and get the truth out.

I want the news delivered unbiased. I thought that was the whole point with journalism.

I'm an expert on the NewsHour and it isn't how I practice journalism. I am not involved in the story. I serve only as a reporter or someone asking questions. I am not the story.

I have yet to meet very many people in the press who are really, truly interested in writing a good story or getting at the truth. Most press people, when they come into an article, have an angle that they want already, so they need points to support that angle, whatever the angle may be.

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.

As a journalist, one tends to think there's nothing off limits.