The palest ink is better than the best memory.
The accuracy of Wikipedia can be dodgy in some places, but in maths, it's really quite good.
Most of our writers tend to be recorders.
The first duty of the Press is to obtain the earliest and most correct intelligence of the time, and instantly, by disclosing them to make them the common property of the nation.
Get the facts, or the facts will get you. And when you get them, get them right, or they will get you wrong.
How do you know the news is reliable if you didn’t gather it yourself?
You've got to be happy if they get your facts right. Since January I don't think I've recognized a damned thing that I've filed. I just pour everything out of the boot. Otherwise you get a phone call at three in the morning asking why you left out that the candidate had his teeth drilled that morning.
But this is an occupational hazard of being a scientist. You say this is the best information I have and then you realize that not everyone is going to read the footnotes or the whole book, so people are going to get the wrong impression.
I don't believe Wikipedia about anything. I don't go there for anything but keywords.
If your story is being told by someone who doesn't really know it, it's not going to come out accurate. A lot of it has to do with context. Whoever's behind the camera or pen or whatever.
Look, obviously that was - created quite a firestorm, but Newsweek editors have made clear that this was a situation where, you know, a solid, well-placed source provided some information.
The truth is overrated.
If I allow journalists to describe a collection and they make mistakes, I'm upset, because the retractions are never noticed.
Every fact in my films is true. And yet how often do I have to read over and over again about supposed falsehoods?
Facts can't be recounted; much less twice over, and far less still by different persons. I've already drummed that thoroughly into your head.
When you are working on a real story it is your responsibility to get everything right and stay as true and authentic as possible.
It's important to get the facts straight, a lot of information out there isn't right.
Perhaps it is because I'm a writer trained in history that I've always assumed I would make mistakes in my drafts. Historians know how faulty human memory can be.
The problem is that with blogging, the model is publish first, maybe fact-check later. In newspapers, the model is you fact check first and then publish. But those models are merging.
One thing you learn about doing nonfiction is that you've got to get it right, fact-check, do your research. You've got to not only get the facts right but represent the subject to the world in a way that insiders feel like it's an access port and outsiders can access it. If you're too insider, you block access to anyone else.
