Tom Rachman Quotes

Whenever you're reporting, there's always something you can't say or write, but the questions, you always want to get as close to that line as possible. You want to ask the tough questions.

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.

I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.

Now everybody is questioning everything, so it's up to journalists who really care about the truth to fight for their corner of the truth and journalistic freedom.

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

I know the difference between journalism and a slogan.

One of the most important disciplines in journalism is to challenge your working premises.

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 can't think in terms of journalism without thinking in terms of political ends. Unless there's been a reaction, there's been no journalism. It's cause and effect.

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.

Journalists are supposed to be skeptical, that's what keeps them digging rather than simply accepting the official line, whether it comes from government or corporate bureaucrats.

We journalists are never so idiotic as when we analyze things that we shouldn't be analyzing.

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

I'm supremely uninterested as to what is written in many of the newspapers.

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

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

I don't believe that there's such a thing as objectivity in much of journalism, but I think there is a serious effort to and a regard for facts and into taking that stuff seriously is very important to the public discourse and it's very important to democracy.

There is much to be said in favour of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.

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.

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.

I know we journalists have a reputation for being cynics. We do. It's our job to question - everything.

Journalism is a messy business. For every prize-winning story there's plenty of gossip and garbage.

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