Jef I. Richards Quotes

I mean, journalism is very detailed... you try to get down in the weeds and sort out exactly what happened. And I don't think that a feature film is really a place where that happens.

A news-writer is a man without virtue who lies at home for his own profit.

There's an old saw about journalism that the more you know about a subject, the less sense reporting about it makes.

It's all storytelling, you know. That's what journalism is all about.

The first duty of a newspaper is to be accurate. If it be accurate, it follows that it is fair.

Profiles aren't journalism.

The news and truth are not the same thing.

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

As anchorman of the CBS Evening News, I signed off my nightly broadcasts for nearly two decades with a simple statement: 'And that's the way it is.' To me, that encapsulates the newsman's highest ideal: to report the facts as he sees them, without regard for the consequences or controversy that may ensue.

It's the broadcaster's dilemma. Are we true journalists? I don't know if I am or not.

Now everybody is questioning everything, so it's up to journalists who really care about the truth to fight for their corner of the truth and journalistic freedom.

Just because you read a report in the 'New York Times,' the 'Economist,' or, yes, 'The New Yorker' doesn't make it true. But we do know that a few people have evaluated that story with what strikes me as fairly objective standards of reason.

Journalism: A profession whose business is to explain to others what it personally does not understand.

But the reporter has the responsibility to determine, number one, whether that is true, and number two, to make a judgment as to whether it's in the public interest and whether or not it should be part of the debate.

I went into journalism to do journalism, not advertising.

In this day and age, much of journalism is about right or left, conservative or liberal, and 'The Observer' is just that: an observer. It is about truth.

It's a journalist's job to be a witness to history. We're not there to worry about ourselves. We're there to try and get as near as we can, in an imperfect world, to the truth and get the truth out.

I'm not an advocacy journalist - that's not what I do. My role in journalism is to be able to engage the most interesting people with the best ideas.

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.

Journalism keeps you planted in the earth.

I think journalism gets measured by the quality of information it presents, not the drama or the pyrotechnics associated with us.

God, newspapers have been making up stories forever. This kind of trifling and fooling around is not a function of the New Journalism.

We in the media should be breaking the news and not making the news.

I send you the newspapers; but they do not always speak true.

In this Day the secrets of the earth are laid bare before the eyes of men. The pages of swiftly-appearing newspapers are indeed the mirror of the world. They reflect the deeds and the pursuits of diverse peoples and kindreds. They both reflect them and make them known. They are a mirror endowed with hearing, sight and speech. This is an amazing and potent phenomenon. However, it behooveth the writers thereof to be purged from the promptings of evil passions and desires and to be attired with the raiment of justice and equity. They should enquire into situations as much as possible and ascertain the facts, then set them down in writing.