The big moment for me was making 'All the President's Men'. It was not about Watergate or President Nixon. I wanted to focus on something I thought not many people knew about: How do journalists get the story?
I studied journalism, though I never really became a scribe.
I was once a journalist. And I think of myself as a journalist, and that's it. You tell the truth. I even wrote a book called 'The Truth'.
One of the principles of journalism is you don't lie. You never lie.
My favorite thing is still journalism. I'm almost 50. This has been my life ever since I was in college.
I like to say that journalism is the graduate school from which you never graduate.
Journalism without a moral position is impossible. Every journalist is a moralist. It's absolutely unavoidable.
I kept thinking, I'm not going to do political journalism, because there's no way to keep my principles and be a political journalist, so I'll edit a popular science magazine. This will be my salvation, and I'll emerge with my integrity intact. That didn't even happen.
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.
I've had a lot of fun, and when I talk to kids in journalism schools, I say, look, I know what the journalism teachers tell you that this is a great way to perform public service and all that, but I say the main reason, if you decide what you want to do is be a reporter, the main reason you want to do it is because it's just so much fun.
I leaned in science class that everything that generates light generates a little bit of heat, but not everything that generates head generates light. So it is with journalism.
This was the premier broadcast of his show 1A.
Even before I joined journalism, I knew that this is what I wanted to do. Tintin was an early inspiration.
The passion and knowledge of journalism as storytelling is incredibly infectious.
I've always loved shows like '48 Hours' and 'Dateline,' and I've always been passionate about getting to the truth, and journalism.
That's what I think a journalist from the '70s and '80s should look like - as though he has led a full journalistic life.
As a journalist, I think the only question that you ask yourself - once you've determined that the material is authentic - is what is in the public interest to know. And then you go about and report it.
I thought that was the crown jewel of the reporter's resume - to actually go to jail protecting a source.
You find the most important thing that really grabs you, and put it right up top. Don't bury the lead. Put it at the top. Best thing to do. Never go wrong that way. It's an immutable law of journalism. It just always works.
When a dog bites a man that is not news, but when a man bites a dog, that is news.
Rule number one of journalism is that trying to get in between a journalist and a story he wants to tell is like trying to stop a herd of stampeding cattle.
What I like to call 'journalism of depth' is the media that regards the collective conscience of the masses to be its point of departure. It is the media that believes, as a matter of principle, in the potential capabilities of the people and respects their choices.
