Leslie Cockburn Quotes

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.

We don't go into journalism to be popular. It is our job to seek the truth and put constant pressure on our leaders until we get answers.

You have to go where the story is to report on it. As a journalist, you're essentially running to things that other people are running away from.

The courage in journalism is sticking up for the unpopular, not the popular.

The truth is, I don't have any problem with journalists - I count some of them as friends - also some of my heroes are journalists, I'm a big fan of Robert Fisk - great people or crazy people who are prepared to stand up for what's right.

We need journalists to be fearless and hold power to account.

Journalism is not writing.

I love reporting stories that the Complex refuses to report.

To newspapers and publishing houses I urge the use of fact over fiction, freedom of the press, and responsibility at all times.

I went into journalism to learn the craft of writing and to get close to the world I wanted to write about - police and criminals, the criminal justice system.

What separated Ed Murrow from the rest of the pack was courage.

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

The big moment for me was making 'All the President's Men'. It was not about Watergate or President Nixon. I wanted to focus on something I thought not many people knew about: How do journalists get the story?

Journalism will kill you, but it will keep you alive while you're at it.

If you're a journalist - and I think, on some level, I'm a journalist, and proud to be a journalist, or a documentarian, however you want to describe it - part of what I do has to be the pursuit of the truth.

Democracies succeed or fail based on their journalism.

Journalism is not just a cause, it's also a wacky profession.

I went into journalism to do journalism, not advertising.

I've always loved shows like '48 Hours' and 'Dateline,' and I've always been passionate about getting to the truth, and journalism.

Journalism is irrepressible. It can't be taken away.

It won't make for a quiet life but it will make for an interesting paper vastly more significant because it is doing something only a daily paper can do.

Journalists are supposed to be skeptical, that's what keeps them digging rather than simply accepting the official line, whether it comes from government or corporate bureaucrats.

I have always thought it morally unacceptable to kill stories, not to run stories, that people have risked their lives to get.

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

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.