Robert Rinder Quotes

The best definition of journalism I have heard; to challenge authority - all authority - especially so when governments and politicians take us to war, when they have decided that they will kill and others will die.

Press freedom has great virtues. It is not about irresponsible scandal-mongering, although that may be part of the picture. It is a means of revealing wrongdoing.

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

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.

When journalists forget that our job is to question and annoy those in power, there can be huge consequences.

It is the role of good journalism to take on powerful abusers, and when powerful abusers are taken on, there's always a bad reaction. So we see that controversy, and we believe that is a good thing to engage in.

Journalism has a check-and-balance effect to those in power, and those in power submitted themselves to it.

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.

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

We have to protect all journalists, and journalists have to be allowed to do their jobs.

Clearly independent journalists - domestic journalists - run a high risk if they dare to take on serious investigative work.

I think the future of journalism is going to be a battle between caution and recklessness. And I think a little bit of recklessness is a good thing, as some of the WikiLeaks cables proved.

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

The fourth estate which if not well looked to, will turn us all out of doors.

It is the business of the journalist … to stand in permanent Opposition.

I think of journalists as being bullet-proof in a way.

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

Our duty as journalists is to use our clarity - and our imagination - to build hope in the societies in which we work. Our duty is to keep holding power to account, and to fight for press freedom around the world.

The ability of the press to print their stories without the government trying to get them to betray their sources is as essential to a free press as the ink it is printed with. Otherwise, who will hold accountable those who hold power over us?

I love reporting stories that the Complex refuses to report.

The job of the press is to defend their institution, hold the government accountable and freely report and gather information.

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

We need a free media, not just freedom of speech.

A free, analytical and questioning press must be helped survive.

There's some irony in playing a journalist after some of the stuff that has been written about me, but it's a great profession, particularly investigative journalism.