Ben Domenech Quotes

If you are a reliable, honest journalist, sources will open up and trust you and share good information.

I think it's a lack of journalistic integrity to print things with anonymous sources.

You know, I was at CBS News for 28 years. I may have run an unidentified source. Frankly, I don't remember.

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

Careful authors and journalists cultivate relationships with a wide variety of sources so as to avoid bad information or being led down an inaccurate path. Gossip columnists don't particularly care if the path is inaccurate, so long as it gets attention and results in more fuel for the fire.

The biggest problem I have in journalism is being quoted or misquoted and then being asked to defend something I haven't said.

Sure, some journalists use anonymous sources just because they're lazy and I think editors ought to insist on more precise identification even if they remain anonymous.

When I was collecting material for a political gossip column, and someone said something interesting, I would wait for them to add, 'and I don't want to read that in your magazine!' In which case I wouldn't use it. But if they didn't remember to say it, I'd nip off to the loo, write the story up, come back and change the subject.

I thought that was the crown jewel of the reporter's resume - to actually go to jail protecting a source.

In my experience with print journalists, the distinction between remarks being uttered on- or off-the-record is held sacrosanct, but the distinction between truth and falsity sometimes isn't.

But the reporter has the responsibility to determine, number one, whether that is true, and number two, to make a judgment as to whether it's in the public interest and whether or not it should be part of the debate.

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

Documentary film without nuanced journalistic sourcing risks being sensational, tendentious or broad-brushed.

Business pages of American newspapers should not read like a scandal sheet.

I was taught that newspapers were supposed to find out if rumors were true, and if not, not print them.

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

I believe there are two kinds of journalists. One who sells a story by being creative, and one who sells a story by being sensationalist.

It's the broadcaster's dilemma. Are we true journalists? I don't know if I am or not.

Columnists must make sure that when they describe an event, they are being accurate in their description. When they quote someone, they are required to do so accurately. Errors that are made must be corrected openly and quickly.

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

There was an honorable tradition of using anonymous sources that was ruined by Jayson Blair.

I hate newspapermen. They come into camp and pick up their camp rumors and print them as facts. I regard them as spies, which, in truth, they are.

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.

There have been many times when we have not run stories because we cannot get it verified.

I will never repeat something verbatim on the air unless I know it's accurate. And when you go to the source, sometimes there's a better story beyond the original story. That happens all the time.