Douglas Preston Quotes

Great questions make great reporting.

One of the most important disciplines in journalism is to challenge your working premises.

I reject the idea that journalists are messengers of the truth. It’s arrogant. I think journalism is a search for the little relative truths that at best keep us relatively sane.

Journalists like to give themselves credit for being on the hunt for 'the truth.' But if we embrace this undoubtedly noble but somewhat haughty interpretation of a calling, we inevitably become susceptible to slam dunk answers.

I have so much more compassion for journalists and the work that they have to do, in order to do the jobs that they have to do. I am much more in awe of and am celebratory of great journalism when I see it, and I'm much more critical of bad journalism, or crap masquerading as journalism.

There aren't enough good journalists. There are too many who really weren't groomed to be reporters and, as a result, some of the reporting is shallow.

I'm not seeing tough questions asked on American television. I'm not seeing those correspondents that would question those in power. It's like a club. We are not asking the tough questions.

A common criticism of establishment journalists entails comparing them to stenographers, on the ground that most of them do little more than mindlessly write down and uncritically repeat what government officials say.

You can criticize any news staff in some ways, but the one thing that you couldn't call the Village Voice staff was a staff of stenographers, taking notes from public figures and just passing them on.

As far as I'm concerned, it's a damned shame that a field as potentially dynamic and vital as journalism should be overrun with dullards, bums, and hacks, hag-ridden with myopia, apathy, and complacence, and generally stuck in a bog of stagnant mediocrity.

We're going to fisk the 'New York Times.'

I know that from the days of Watergate... the notion of two sources on a story has become the popular dogma about how you confirm something. And there is a lot of truth to that, but there are all kinds of ways to check to the extent that you can, a story that you get.

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

The media's job is to question a premise.

I try to be careful about wording. One of the things I've tried to combat in my blog is the notion that journalists are arrogant and unconcerned with the readership.

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

Most reporters who come to me get their stories directly from press releases. Very few do what one would consider to be their professional duty.

We don't go into journalism to be popular. It is our job to seek the truth and put constant pressure on our leaders until we get answers.

I don't trust a lot of journalists.

Scepticism is as important for a good journalist as it is for a good scientist.

I love to run smart essays and commentary. But it doesn't replace the other kind of reporting.

The democratic approach to news is a very valuable thing. We're always going to be dependent on the quality of reporting of mainstream media.

If establishment journalists were to replicate actual stenography, it would be an improvement on most of the work they produce.

CNN is getting smarter, and you can feel it in the stories, you can feel it in the depth with which they're covered, the kinds of people in terms of guests who are brought on air, the way in which issues are discussed.

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