Source Validation Quotes

Now we have a whole separate supplier of data for Able Danger who's verifying that same information.

The accuracy of Wikipedia can be dodgy in some places, but in maths, it's really quite good.

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.

It's impossible for an editor to know every source for every story.

People don't bother to check with anything anymore. They just like to speculate in print. We like fact-checking!

I think that any time you are making a film you have to realize that the people you are talking with might be giving you misinformation. Sometimes it is factually incorrect and for that, it's important to me to check it out and not let things find their way into the film without being challenged, either by me, or by another character, or by evidence that you might see on screen.

An espionage organization is a collector: it collects raw information. That gets processed by a machinery that is supposed to resolve its reliability, and to present a finished product.

Within the Intelligence Community, CIA is the keeper of the human intelligence mission. Technical forms of collection are vital, but a good human source is unique and can deliver decisive intelligence on our adversaries' secrets - even their intent.

You have to really be careful with what you see and read because you can't believe it all.

As a print journalist, if you hear a rumour you try to stand it up and if you can't, the story dies. With a blog you can throw the rumour out there and ask for help. You can say: 'We don't know if this is true or not.'

If it's on the Internet, then it's gotta be true.

The footnote would seem to be the smallest detail in a work of history. Yet it carries a large burden of responsibility, testifying to the validity of the work, the integrity (and the humility) of the historian, and to the dignity of the discipline.

Get in the habit of vetting your research as you go - particularly research conducted online. Verify facts from multiple reputable sources before you record them.

I deal with first-hand sources. And give the people, even John Sununu, the opportunity to respond to what I've been told by first-hand sources.

If it's on the Internet, it's real!

Everywhere you go you hear things that are untrue. You've just got to learn that if I don't say it, physically out of my mouth, on camera, it's not true.

I am reminded of the professor who, in his declining hours, was asked by his devoted pupils for his final counsel. He replied, 'Verify your quotations.

It was the usual sort of academic battle: footnotes at ten paces, bolstered by snide articles in academic journals and lots of sniping about methodology, a thrust and parry of source and countersource. My sources had to be better.