Errol Morris Quotes

My journalistic heroes are Peter Jennings and Ted Koppel and Tim Russert and Edward R. Murrow, among others, because they were tough.

Anderson Cooper is fine. He is a smart, conscientious guy, and he seems to want his show to produce and highlight good journalism. But he also seems to want to replace Regis, or maybe even Oprah.

CBS's Ed Murrow may have been over-celebrated as the principled observer for the masses, fair yet unafraid to take on the bullies.

But unfortunately, I have to say, one out of every 100 interviews I do, I get a real journalist.

There's not a better job in journalism than the one we have, seriously on '60 Minutes' - not a better job.

Interviews, and hence interviewers, are there to help shed light, and to let viewers judge for themselves. We are not judges, juries, commentators or torturers - nor friends, either.

Television reporters aren't really called reporters. They are called researchers. And that's really all they are.

The highest power of television journalism is not the transmission of information but the transmission of experience.

In journalism the gold standard has become punditry rather than reporting.

Before I ever heard about '60 Minutes,' I had been a writer, a columnist for 'Life' magazine and for 'Newsweek' - that was about as high as you could get in column writing. I care about my writing. I'm not a quack-quack TV journalist.

The level of journalism in this country is just so pathetically poor, and I've, in a sense, gone over the top of them, which they don't like.

I always imagined myself doing what Barbara Walters did on '20/20.' That, essentially, is what inspired me to go to journalism school.

A lot of people involved with celebrity journalism have interesting ideas about the people they want to write about going into the interview. Then as soon as they actually sit down with that person, they basically ask the questions they think journalists are supposed to ask, and they start viewing themselves almost as a peer of the subject. Like they're going to become friends. That's why most celebrity journalism is so terrible.

Obviously I love doing newsmaker interviews, and if I can contribute in any way to that, I would love to. I love reporting, getting out in the field and talking to people about various issues.

American journalism (like the journalism of any other country) is predominantly paltry and worthless. Its pretensions are enormous, but its achievements are insignificant.

When I was a journalist, I didn't care how many people talked to Ice Cube before I talked Ice Cube. I just knew that when I talked to Ice Cube, it was going to be different than what anybody else had done, and it was the same with any group.

Documentary people have to know that, particularly nowadays, they have to be on a mission. And part of the mission is to - is to be like good journalists: search for the truth, have an open mind, listen to as much as you can of different sides of things.

I have no interest in interfering or involving myself in journalistic integrity or process.

So often on CNN, there's a world-class journalist interviewing campaign rejects and ideologues and silly, craven people who do not care about informing people, that aren't there to help people understand what's going on in the news.

I would love for us to get back to a place in this country where we have real journalists, where we have real news reporting.

Media doesn't like when other media gets their credentials pulled - that's not OK.

In the most polarized and passionate, the most angry and aggressive news environment in recent memory, my job as a journalist requires me - often - to push back in live interviews against comments that are unfair, untrue, or leave me thinking, 'Is this seriously happening right now?'

I love breaking news. And I was always trying to create the new, the next thing in television news. So I was the first to do overnight news.

The dominant and most deep-dyed trait of the journalist is his timorousness. Where the novelist fearlessly plunges into the water of self-exposure, the journalist stands trembling on the shore in his beach robe. The journalist confines himself to the clean, gentlemanly work of exposing the grieves and shames of others.

A successful current affairs television show seems to be more and more a cross between a music hall turn and a scene in a torture chamber.