Zechariah Chafee Jr. Quotes

Journalists are supposed to be skeptical, that's what keeps them digging rather than simply accepting the official line, whether it comes from government or corporate bureaucrats.

I don't think that any government has a right to subvert the truth or to cover up the truth, and all I see WikiLeaks doing is exposing the truth.

There's no question that sources sometimes have interests aside from the truth when they talk to reporters. That's why reporters have to very aggressively report against their own theses and against their initial information.

Openness, transparency - these are among the few weapons the citizenry has to protect itself from the powerful and the corrupt... and that is the best thing that WikiLeaks has done.

Democracies succeed or fail based on their journalism.

The truth is, there's an information blockade in America, and it must be broken. In order to find crucial facts, numbers and outside perspectives, a person must spend an hour searching and cross-searching on the computer.

What I'm thinking about more and more these days is simply the importance of transparency, and Jefferson's saying that he'd rather have a free press without a government than a government without a free press.

As journalists, we cannot swallow the official line without question. We should challenge almost everything that dictators, presidents and officials say.

I think the good old British democracy should keep scrutinising and pressing to get the truth out.

All I can say right now is the U.S. government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me. Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped.

The Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to bare the secrets of government and inform the people.

Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people

Every person must be his own watchman for the truth, because the forefathers did not trust government to separate the true from the false for us.

American democracy depends on the public's ability to remain accurately informed on our state of affairs.

Democratic societies need a strong media, and WikiLeaks is part of that media.

Good journalism is being criminalized or otherwise rendered perilous to its best practitioners. Attack a government agency like the CIA, or a Fortune 500 member ..., or the conduct of the military in Southeast Asia and you find yourself in deep trouble, naked and often alone.

Yes, and you should question your government.

On the face of it, it must be a bad cause which will not bear discussion. Truth seeks light instead of shunning it.

In a free society, we are supposed to know the truth. In a society where truth becomes treason, we are in big trouble.

No matter how imperfect things are, if you've got a free press everything is correctable, and without it everything is concealable.

The durability of free speech and free press rests on the simple concept that it search for the truth and tell the truth.

The most effective means of ensuring the government's accountability to the people is an aggressive, free, challenging, untrusting press.

We obviously need the truth. We're living in a country of lies.

Americans can live with the fact that good people sometimes give their lives for this country, but what they can't take, what they can't live with is when their government is not square with them.

Every politician, every member of the clerical profession, ought to incur the reasonable suspicion of being an interested supporter of false doctrines, who becomes angry at opposition, and endeavors to cast an odium on free inquiry. Fraud and falsehood only dread examination. Truth invites it.