Michael Wolff Quotes

Most of the people I write about I'm still in touch with, so I would be loath to make up stuff about them.

A journalists's job is not to be balanced. It is to be accurate.

Seek truth from facts.

Readers appreciate the truth. Why say, 'Some think a situation is a mess?' Based on my reporting, if a situation is a mess, then I say that. The truth is always what reporters tell each other when they get back to the newsroom.

Science doesn't care, by and large, what the answers are. It's only interested in getting the right answer. And journalism should be very much that way.

When we are reporting the news, we make every effort to report it in as factual way as possible.

I always try to find the truth in a situation. That unvarnished, pure nugget of truth at the core of every issue that I write about.

Fact-checking doesn't exist primarily because some of us are liars and cheats. It exists because writers will be writers, much as they may mean to be historians.

Tricks you need to transform something which appears fantastic, unbelievable into something plausible, credible, those I learned from journalism. The key is to tell it straight. It is done by reporters and by country folk.

A writer's job is to tell the truth.

Not to be weirdly glib, but as a reporter, you should be honest all the time.

Once we thought, journalists and readers alike, that if we put together enough 'facts' and gave them a fast stir, we would come up with something that, at least by the standards of short-order cooks, could be called the truth.

I think all good reporting is the same thing - the best attainable version of the truth.

I think you get into trouble as an author and a journalist when, rather than owning the gaps, you try to elide them.

Certainly in my own body of reporting, I was very acutely aware of the risk of any mischaracterized journalism and the need for anything I put out to be absolutely bulletproof.

More and more, journalism seems to have hopped out of Truth's pocket and crept into another.

When you are a journalist, you have a big responsibility towards your audience and it is important to respect that responsibility.

I have found where I am best, and that is being a fact-checker and being fearless.

See, I have no journalism in my background, so I wasn't practised at research or writing non-fiction, nor at handling the truth in a journalistic way. Journalists know when to call a halt and write something, but I kept on looking for answers.

I would never have been a good reporter because I am not accurate regarding facts.

A lot of journalism wants to have what they call objectivity without them having a commitment to pursuing the truth, but that doesn't work. Objectivity requires belief in and a commitment toward pursuing the truth - having an object outside of our personal point of view.

I think the way to be an influential journalist is to be accurate and to be fair and to get things right and to really characterize things in an honest way, versus being really snarky or cheerleading.

Good journalism, I think, represents life and if you try to organize something too neatly it usually blows up in your face and doesn't really happen the way you want it to.

A hard-hitting investigative report that uncovers a nugget of genuine truth is the ultimate viral hit.

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'.