Ted Koppel Quotes

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

I encourage members of the media to attempt to Be Best in their own professions.

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.

Good journalism, I think, represents life and if you try to organize something too neatly it usually blows up in your face and doesn't really happen the way you want it to.

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

We need ethical journalism. There is also capacity limitations in journalism.

A good journalist is modest; his only job is simple: to decide what counts as news.

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.

At CNN, our view is that good journalism equals good business.

And I really believe good journalism is good business.

I think all good reporting is the same thing - the best attainable version of the truth.

Good reporting should have the same standard as in a courtroom - beyond a reasonable doubt.

Most good newspapers don't set out to offend readers. But newspapers shouldn’t avoid controversy, and if they don’t occasionally a offend readers, they’re probably not doing their job.

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

My job is to cover the news and do it accurately and fair. And we do.

We have rights in America. In tandem with those rights, we have responsibility. Whatever type of journalist we are, whether it be in the entertainment business, or as professional journalists, we always have the consequences of the way we present fact and information.

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.

I'm not an expert on journalistic standards. I want to be clear on that.

You have to be careful not to go overboard. How do you balance what is clearly great television with good journalism?

It matters that we have balance and facts and push people when they need to be pushed so that we can give the accurate, fair, balanced piece to the viewer, and then it's up to the viewer to be the judge.

I had a very strong background in journalism, so it's my instinct to try to be as fair and accurate as possible.

Journalists prize independence - not teamwork.

To newspapers and publishing houses I urge the use of fact over fiction, freedom of the press, and responsibility at all times.

Journalism: A profession whose business is to explain to others what it personally does not understand.