Alex Scott Quotes

If there's anything about someone's life that's important enough to make a movie about it, I have to take responsibility to get all of it right. It's a huge responsibility.

If I was President of the United States, I'd rather be right than interesting. If I was CEO of a company, I'd rather be right than interesting. But I'm a journalist - what journalist would rather be right than interesting?

It is our responsibility not to make charges we can't substantiate

More and more, journalism seems to have hopped out of Truth's pocket and crept into another.

Journalists must work to earn the trust of those they aim to serve.

I tell the truth. That's my training as a reporter.

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

I think a lot about something: Abe Rosenthal was once asked what he wanted on his headstone, and he said he wanted it just to say, 'He kept the paper straight.' And I think about that a lot.

Laziness has become the chief characteristic of journalism, displacing incompetence.

The scientist only imposes two things, namely truth and sincerity, imposes them upon himself and upon other scientists.

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

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

My comments are reserved for reputable journalists.

The first duty of a newspaper is to be accurate. If it be accurate, it follows that it is fair.

If there's anything that's important to a reporter, it is integrity. It is credibility.

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've been a reporter for 20 years, and I don't ever get things wrong. That's important in terms of my professional status.

'The Guardian,' with its deep journalistic traditions, is careful about context and explanation. It sees itself as a gatekeeper, and it worries about consequences.

I think journalism gets measured by the quality of information it presents, not the drama or the pyrotechnics associated with us.

… he who makes an assertion without knowing whether it is true or false, is guilty of falsehood; and the accidental truth of the assertion, does not justify or excuse him.

We don't print the truth. We don't pretend to print the truth. We print what people tell us. It's up to the public to decide what's the truth.

Even the very best newspapers have never learned how to handle public figures who lie with a straight face.

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

Certainly in my own body of reporting, I was very acutely aware of the risk of any mischaracterized journalism and the need for anything I put out to be absolutely bulletproof.

It is a fairly serious thing that you're doing if you're writing about people who are still alive and who still have a role in public life. Sometimes you don't want to be reminded too much of the responsibility.