Kevin Macdonald Quotes

The first step in good reporting is good snooping.

I enjoy doing the research of nonfiction; that gives me some pleasure, being a detective again.

I'm big on research. I love research, so I tend to do a lot of reading.

I think it's like everything else; one shouldn't dig too deeply. It's silly to say that with a journalist, but sometimes there is not a truth to be found.

To be a good researcher is to be a good detective, and I enjoy ferreting out tidbits of information. For a diary book like 'A Coal Miner's Bride,' newspapers come in handy for small everyday details such as weather reports.

What I love - and I'm a journalist - and what I love is finding hidden patterns; I love being a data detective.

I have learned as a journalist that if you look long enough and hard enough and carefully enough, most truths are discoverable.

I love researching, I love interviewing.

It is easy to make stuff up - and easy to dig up information and repeat it or report it to others. But to find a real life story with real people in real life situations is quite difficult and time-consuming. Yet, the rewards are worth the effort.

The true facts are not always obvious. They often have to be looked for.

If I wasn't a writer/director, I would be an investigative journalist. There's something about being an undercover journalist. I mean, that's freakin' cool!

Read like a detective and write like a conscientious investigative reporter.

People are curious. A few people are. ... They will put things together, knowing all along that they may be mistaken. You see them going around with notebooks, scraping the dirt off gravestones, reading microfilm, just in the hope of seeing this trickle in time, making a connection, rescuing one thing from the rubbish.

Each story we approach in the same way, with curiosity and interest and determination to get behind the image.

I love doing research.

If an investigative reporter finds out that someone has been robbing the store, that may be 'gotcha' journalism, but it's also good journalism.

As an old reporter, we have a few secrets, and the first thing is we try the phone book.

I had pictured journalism as I'd seen it in the most ennobling films, where the reporter battles for the truth, propelled by conviction, and is triumphant. There are journalists who fit that ideal.

I ask myself questions that journalists don't dare to ask or don't know how to ask.

As you can tell from the titles of my books, I like to probe secret organizations, secret subjects. And this sometimes gets me into trouble.

Science never gives up searching for truth, since it never claims to have achieved it.

In terms of asking questions, I plead guilty. I ask a hell of a lot of questions. That's my job.

In journalism it is simpler to sound off than it is to find out. It is more elegant to pontificate than it is to sweat.

All I'm armed with is research.

I think we are starting to get some information that will allow us to get to the bottom of this, and I hope we continue to work on this until we get to the bottom of it.