Helen Thomas Quotes

One of the great things about journalism, at its best I mean, is its forensic, investigative truth seeking instincts.

I am a big believer in the power of journalism; it's a heroic pursuit.

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.

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.

If I'd written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people - including me - would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.

The most important responsibility we have as journalists is to question those who are in power. I honestly believe that.

If you're a journalist - and I think, on some level, I'm a journalist, and proud to be a journalist, or a documentarian, however you want to describe it - part of what I do has to be the pursuit of the truth.

The media does play a vital role in our democracy, and if we cannot depend on journalistic ethics, the nation's in trouble.

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 have always thought it morally unacceptable to kill stories, not to run stories, that people have risked their lives to get.

As a journalist, one tends to think there's nothing off limits.

One of the most important roles of our journalists is to be watchdogs.

When a reporter sits down at the typewriter, he's nobody's friend.

You hope the American people are fair. We recognize journalists have to kill somebody each week.

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

I'm doing real journalism.

The point of journalism is to hold people in positions of power accountable.

I think the media's responsibility is to get to the bottom of things - to get to the truth.

I just don't understand why people decide to be journalists if they're not willing to investigate hard-hitting news stories.

I'm not a critic, I'm a journalist. I'm doing my job holding the government to account.

As reporters, we not only deliver the news of the day. We must also defend the truth. And just because we are pro-truth doesn't mean we are anti-Trump.

Journalism can never be silent: that is its greatest virtue and its greatest fault.

Journalists prize independence - not teamwork.

Journalism is the protection between people and any sort of totalitarian rule. That's why my hero, admittedly a flawed one, is a journalist.