John le Carre Quotes

I think every journalist understands when they are the beneficiary of hot information that, yes, they have a scoop, but they're also being used. Part of your responsibility as a journalist is to tell the story of why that information is coming to you, consistent with the ground rules of your sourcing.

I'm afraid there's nothing we can do about the journalists; we can only hope that they will die off as the deerflies do towards the end of August.

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.

I have great respect for the news and great respect for freedom of the press and all of that.

We all work for media, we all make mistakes all the time. That's inevitable. What the difference between a responsible journalistic institution is, does it care whether it makes mistakes or not? And does it correct them?

In the eight years I worked at newspapers, even during a little stretch when I was a film critic, I was never, ever doing exclusively criticism. In the daily newspaper world, much more value is placed on reporting than on thinking abstractly about art. The eight years I was in newspapers, I was mainly a journalist in the conventional sense, and just doing criticism when there were opportunities.

I think what we try to do is bring the news to our viewers in a very comprehensive responsible way.

Journalism is straying into entertainment.

The White House press corps isn't there at a press briefing. It's not... They're not news gatherers there. There really isn't any media.

You have to draw lines between being a journalist and an activist.

I hate journalists. There is nothing in them but tittering jeering emptiness. They have all made what Dante calls the Great Refusal. The shallowest people on the ridge of the earth.

Never trust a journalist.

Journalism is often simply the industrialisation of gossip.

You don’t have journalists over there anymore, what they have is public relations people. That’s what they have over in America now. Two-hundred and fifty thousand people in public relations. And a dwindling number of actual reporters and journalists.

Working as a journalist is exactly like being a wallflower at an orgy.

Newspapers should have no friends.

News is not a game show. You don't win a car if you happen to be right.

I believe journalism is coming to be regarded as quite a respectable occupation for gentlemen nowadays.

If that is what makes us liberals, so be it, just as long as in reporting the news we adhere to the first ideals of good journalism - that news reports must be fair, accurate and unbiased.

Everybody who's in the news business today was influenced in a positive way by Walter Cronkite. He had ability, humility and integrity, a rare combination.

...the indispensable requirement for a good newspaperman - as eager to tell a lie as the truth.

In the end I'm still a writer. I'm still a journalist, and my first responsibility is to my readers. That's where I have to draw the line.

The Chicago City News Bureau was a tripwire for all the newspapers in town when I was there, and there were five papers, I think. We were out all the time around the clock and every time we came across a really juicy murder or scandal or whatever, they'd send the big time reporters and photographers, otherwise they'd run our stories. So that's what I was doing, and I was going to university at the same time.

I know it's cheaper to fund an op-ed columnist than a team of reporters, but I think it confuses the mission of what these great journalistic brands are about.

Journalists do not live by words alone, although sometimes they have to eat them.