Michael Specter Quotes

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

I don't trust news sources, and neither should other people. They should use them in the same way that they use medical opinions and get more than one on the important issues. Trust is the most precious thing you could possibly give to another person. But to institutions? Publications?

If you are a journalist, check and double-check your sources. Don't just swallow what politicians tell you.

Fact-checking doesn't exist primarily because some of us are liars and cheats. It exists because writers will be writers, much as they may mean to be historians.

God, newspapers have been making up stories forever. This kind of trifling and fooling around is not a function of the New Journalism.

More and more, journalism seems to have hopped out of Truth's pocket and crept into another.

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

But there's a big difference between, say, reporting on a story and simply making up a story.

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.

Just because it's in print doesn't mean it's the gospel.

I send you the newspapers; but they do not always speak true.

A news-writer is a man without virtue who lies at home for his own profit.

We don't print the truth. We don't pretend to print the truth. We print what people tell us. It's up to the public to decide what's the truth.

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

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

Just look carefully, I only want you to look carefully. Do not repeat the lies of liars. Do not become like them. Once again, I blame al-Jazeera before it ascertains what takes place. Please, make sure of what you say and do not play such a role.

See, I have no journalism in my background, so I wasn't practised at research or writing non-fiction, nor at handling the truth in a journalistic way. Journalists know when to call a halt and write something, but I kept on looking for answers.

I would never have been a good reporter because I am not accurate regarding facts.

You shouldn't presume that all quotes that are in a magazine or a newspaper are accurate.

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

It's all storytelling, you know. That's what journalism is all about.

People everywhere confuse what they read in newspapers with news.

We take what's shown on television as the truth, and it isn't. News isn't even the truth on television. If you look up the definition of what news is, it isn't that what we're watching on the new - it's entertainment.

To a journalist, good news is often not news at all.

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.