Sarah Koenig Quotes

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.

I think you get into trouble as an author and a journalist when, rather than owning the gaps, you try to elide them.

As for being an objective journalist? That's easy. I want what everyone else wants: the truth.

Well, I don't know about objectivity, but I know for certain that it's always possible for a professional journalist who understands what he or she's up to to be fair, and that's the key word. Fairness to individuals, fairness to ideas, and to issues and whatever - that is critical, and that is also part and parcel of what the job.

I think the way to be an influential journalist is to be accurate and to be fair and to get things right and to really characterize things in an honest way, versus being really snarky or cheerleading.

If you're going to be in the business of news and telling people the truth... you've got to be honest. You've got to have the same rules for yourself as you do for everyone else.

I don't claim to be a journalist. I hold myself to higher standards of transparency and disclosure.

Most of the people I write about I'm still in touch with, so I would be loath to make up stuff about them.

Any journalist worth his or her salt wouldn't trust me.

As a trial lawyer in front of a jury and an author of true-crime books, credibility has always meant everything to me. My only master and my only mistress are the facts and objectivity. I have no others.

As a journalist - or as a writer - my obligation is to come as close to the truth as I possibly can. And that's not as close to someone else's truth, but the truth as I see it.

Some journalists are schmucks, in it for themselves, willing to cut corners. But in my experience the vast majority of journalists are trying to contribute to their communities, honestly and reliably.

When you are a journalist, you have a big responsibility towards your audience and it is important to respect that responsibility.

Women lie, men lie, numbers don't.

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

Readers appreciate the truth. Why say, 'Some think a situation is a mess?' Based on my reporting, if a situation is a mess, then I say that. The truth is always what reporters tell each other when they get back to the newsroom.

I am bound to tell what I am told, but not in every case to believe it.

We are really the conveyors of truth in a very critical time and people need to know that truth.

If I were less than honest as a critic, I think people would spot that right away, and it would destroy my credibility.

I was once a journalist. And I think of myself as a journalist, and that's it. You tell the truth. I even wrote a book called 'The Truth'.

No writer for the press, however humble, is free from the burden of keeping his purpose high and his integrity white.

Truth indeed rather alleviates than hurts, and will always bear up against falsehood, as oil does above water.

The responsibility that I feel is to do as good a job as a journalist as I can possibly do.

I think Shep Smith is probably the premier anchor/journalist of my generation. He's terrific, and he does the news straight and let the chips fall where they may.

Never question the relevance of truth, but always question the truth of relevance.