Fact-Based Reporting Quotes

The critical importance of honest journalism and a free flowing, respectful national conversation needs to be had in our country. But it is being buried as collateral damage in a war whose battles include political correctness and ideological orthodoxy.

The best I can hope for is that I might provoke a water cooler argument between you and somebody else. But it is not journalism. It doesn't have the rigor of journalism. It doesn't have the proof positive that facts provide. So it can be readily dismissed as mere propaganda. But I can certainly reach more people.

We journalists make it a point to know very little about an extremely wide variety of topics; this is how we stay objective.

The idea that a reporter has to be 'fair and balanced' is ridiculous. The fact is, the truth usually is not fair and it's not balanced. Truth stands by itself. And the idea that something called fair and balanced is a substitute for truth and fact is mindless nonsense that has captured much of the national media.

I think that there's become a very clickbait mentality among a lot of reporters, where they're more interested in their clip or their click than they are about the truth and the facts.

What we want is responsible journalism. We want to avoid bigotry.

My inclination, as an old-school, classically trained journalist, is not to go with a story unless I have it hard. It's not good enough to say something based on rumors that were flying around.

I think in politics, in Congress, you often do things that are Republican, or you do things because you're a Democrat. Sometimes that's good, obviously, and sometimes that's obviously bad. But in the news business, there's no such thing as Republican or Democratic news. News is news.

I'm not in the judgment part of journalism.

I do have a problem with how 'Politico' has engaged in covering politics, especially on our side. I think it is tweet-happy, it is clickbait in many cases, and it's devoid of facts.

Right-wing media and politicians are looking for any opportunity to be critical of the reporters who are here. Some reporters make judgments, but that is not my style. I present both sides and report what I see with my own eyes.

Too often reporters covering scientific debates give fringe views equal weight in a misguided attempt to achieve balance.

One of the principles of journalism is you don't lie. You never lie.

If I'm hip, we've got a problem in this country. I really shouldn't be held up as any model of hipness. If anything, I think I'm sort of old school in my approach to objective reporting and not wearing my opinion on my sleeve. There's a lot of that in American TV news these days. Too much, in fact.

A lot more than objectivity has gone missing in our reporting; intelligence has gone missing. The people in charge of the nation’s newsrooms, I continue to believe, are not as deeply, profoundly stupid as so much of what they put on their homepages, increasingly in positions calculated to attract clicks. Then I realize: The internet waits for no man. Neither does happy hour. Thinking and writing carefully require time and effort. The press hasn’t so much abandoned standards of objectivity; it has abandoned standards of effort under a digital imperative that not only favors low-intelligence “hot takes,” but makes them the calling card of what used to be a “news” industry.

The perfect integrity of The NewYork Times, and its writers, is not precisely 'just silly nonsense,'

To become informed and hold government accountable, the general public needs to obtain news that is comprehensive yet interesting and understandable, that conveys facts and outcomes, not cosmetic images and airy promises. But that is not what the public demands.

I did very extensive diligence on Al Jazeera English, the network from which Al Jazeera America is going to be derived, and it's really very clear that they have long since established a reputation for excellence and integrity and objectivity.

If I do an interview with [Holocaust survivor] Elie Wiesel, am I required as a journalist to find a Holocaust denier?

I see a pretty bright line between analysis and opinion. And so, to that end, my goal on Friday nights is to try to assemble the smartest reporters who are available to me that week who have been involved in covering the news.

I think it's very useful for you folks (reporters) to try your damndest to be precise. And don't repeat things that are inaccurate if you can possibly avoid it. And when you see things that are inaccurate, knock them down -- because there's a bucket of it floating around.

I just think we as consumers of information media must be very clear what it is we are consuming. Whether we are choosing to get our information by listening to people fight about it. Or whether we're choosing to get it by listening to the facts or watching the facts as they're laid out and then reaching our own conclusions. It's very different ways of info gathering, but it's not all journalism.

I really admire really good reporters. Obviously not the gossip ones, but it could be quite an interesting profession, depending on what you're investigating.

I don’t believe there are two sides to every argument. I think the facts are the center. And watching the news abandon the facts in favor of “fairness” is what’s troubling to me.

When a big event happens, people turn on to CNN, not only because they know there will be people there covering an event on the ground, but because they know we're going to cover it in a way that's non-partisan, that's not left or right.