Watchdog Journalism Quotes

There are a lot of ways to practice the art of journalism, and one of them is to use your art like a hammer to destroy the right people — who are almost always your enemies, for one reason or another, and who usually deserve to be crippled, because they are wrong. This is a dangerous notion, and very few professional journalists will endorse it — calling it "vengeful" and "primitive" and "perverse" regardless of how often they might do the same thing themselves. "That kind of stuff is opinion," they say, "and the reader is cheated if it's not labelled as opinion." Well, maybe so. Maybe Tom Paine cheated his readers and Mark Twain was a devious fraud with no morals at all who used journalism for his own foul ends. And maybe H. L. Mencken should have been locked up for trying to pass off his opinions on gullible readers and normal "objective journalism." Mencken understood that politics — as used in journalism — was the art of controlling his environment, and he made no apologies for it. In my case, using what politely might be called "advocacy journalism," I've used reporting as a weapon to affect political situations that bear down on my environment.

The function of a newspaper in a democracy is to stand as a sort of chronic opposition to the reigning quacks.

Investigative reporting is not a way to make friends.

The best definition of journalism I have heard; to challenge authority - all authority - especially so when governments and politicians take us to war, when they have decided that they will kill and others will die.

I have always been of the opinion that the right kind of journalism is a critical part of our democracy.

It is the business of the journalist … to stand in permanent Opposition.

The press was to serve the governed, not the governors.

What would this country be like without the press prying to find out what the government is doing?

The press deserved the attacks and criticisms of Will Irwin (1910) and Upton Sinclair (1920) and the muckrakers who followed, and it needs today the watchdog and gadfly activities of the new critical weeklies, but all in all it is now a better medium of mass information.... The 1972 Watergate disclosures, it is true, were made by only a score of the members of the mass media, but I remember Teapot Dome when only one of our 1,750 dailies (the Albuquerque Morning Journal) dared to tell the truth about White House corruption. We have come a long way since.

Journalism has a check-and-balance effect to those in power, and those in power submitted themselves to it.

The press is supposed to watch the powerful. And not throw in with them.

I'm not a critic, I'm a journalist. I'm doing my job holding the government to account.

We've lost that very simple transaction that's so pure, where a reader can say, "I support what you're doing, here's my dollar. I know that you guys are gonna be watchdogs or keep the government accountable, so here's my 50-cent contribution each day." It's just so tidy, and I think so inspiring.

The Factor concept is very simple: Watch all of those in power, including and especially the media, so they don't injure or exploit the folks, everyday Americans. Never before in the United States had a television news guy dared to criticize other journalists on a regular basis. The late Peter Jennings, a friend, told me I was crazy to do it. "These people will not allow anyone to scrutinize them," he said. "They will come after you with a vengeance." And so they have.

The most important responsibility we have as journalists is to question those who are in power. I honestly believe that.

Secretive power loathes journalists who do their job: who push back screens, peer behind façades, lift rocks. Opprobrium from on high is their badge of honour.

We need an independent media to hold people like me to account.

As I occasionally survey the pack of sycophantic shih tzus in the Washington press corps, wriggling on their bellies to kiss the feet of those in power, I feel plumb discouraged about the future of journalism.

It is the role of good journalism to take on powerful abusers, and when powerful abusers are taken on, there's always a bad reaction. So we see that controversy, and we believe that is a good thing to engage in.

The point of journalism is to hold people in positions of power accountable.

When journalists forget that our job is to question and annoy those in power, there can be huge consequences.

Without the media, the American people won't have the type of information they need to hold their leaders to account. The relationship between government and media has always been strained, and I think most of the time that's a healthy strain.

Newspapers that are truly independent, like The Washington Post, can still aggressively investigate anyone or anything with no holds barred.

Journalists are like dogs, when ever anything moves they begin to bark.

When's the last time CNN broke an important story or really made the government angry? I literally can't remember. That's because they're built to be inoffensive. They do the opposite of watchdog journalism. They simply pass on the government's message to their audience.