Journalistic Objectivity Quotes

I don’t care if you fuck the elephants, but if you do, you can’t cover the circus.

I don't know if I ever believed in the infallibility of a journalist's objectivity, but I definitely stopped flirting with the notion as a young adult.

Liberal papers are not necessarily liberal.

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

The most consistent and ultimately damaging failure of political journalism in America has its roots in the clubby/cocktail personal relationships that inevitably develop between politicians and journalists. When professional antagonists become after-hours drinking buddies, they are not likely to turn each other in

Journalism is not a precise science, it's a crude art

I was trained as journalist never to use the word 'I,' never to put my own opinion there. In fact, if you had a dollar or a euro for every time I use the word 'I,' you would be a poor person. But this is not true in general. I like the idea of being able to stand away and make a judgement.

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

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

The good journalist is never objective. He is always neutral.

Journalism is kind of scary and of it we should be wary.

I think the hardest stories we tell are always the ones about ourselves. And as a journalist, I was taught that I'm never supposed to put myself in the story. So I spent what, 11, 12 years of my life writing about other people so I don't have to face my own life.

When I was a kid growing up, I always thought I would be a journalist, and I thought, you know, I'd cover stories about other people, and we're always taught never to make the story about yourself.

I chose Journalism by default. I always loved TV, and I had no idea what else to do, so I studied what interested me.

The A-listers and the A+ listers, are reporting the news, they're not making it.

I wouldn't say all journalism is activism, but I would say most journalism is activism.

The function of good journalism is to take information and add value to it.

I like my job and I want to do well at it but I think there's much more integrity to being a journalist maybe than being an actor.

In a way, I think we all want to look to that journalistic voice as a kind of global omniscience, a big eye to correct for our own limited purview: "Here's a realistic accounting of the world in which we live."

American journalism (like the journalism of any other country) is predominantly paltry and worthless. Its pretensions are enormous, but its achievements are insignificant.

The truth is, "What is a journalist?" is one of those questions for which there is no proper answer. The prehistory of modern journalism shows it has been a ragged and confusing trade all the way through.

Beginning, perhaps, from the reasonable perspective that absolute objectivity is unattainable, Fox News and MSNBC no longer even attempt it. They show us the world not as it is, but as partisans (and loyal viewers) at either end of the political spectrum would like it to be. This is to journalism what Bernie Madoff was to investment: He told his customers what they wanted to hear, and by the time they learned the truth, their money was gone.

Journalists in newspapers and in many magazines are not permitted to be subjective and tell their readers what they think. Journalists have got to follow a very strict formulaic line, and here we come, these non-fiction writers, these former journalists who are using all the techniques that journalists are pretty much not allowed to use.

I know a lot of you believe that most people in the news business are liberal. Let me tell you, I know a lot of them, and they were almost evenly divided this time. Half of them liked Senator Kerry; the other half hated President Bush.

Objective journalism is one of the main reasons that American politics has been allowed to be so corrupt for so long.