Cheo Hodari Coker Quotes

In the normal course of things, journalists want their story, and as soon as they are through with it, they pack their cameras and go. That was never the impression that David Astor gave when you were interviewed by him. It was far deeper than that.

I'm a journalist; I love doing interviews, and I hope that will continue.

I can't think of any other job in journalism where the newsmakers come to you.

A basic rule of life for reporters is that you should spend your time talking with and learning about people who are not sending you press releases, rather than those who are.

It doesn't matter if I go on CBS, PBS or Fox. Whoever is interviewing me is going to want to create some conflict in the story, or it's not interesting. That's just the way the news is.

Speaking generally, people who are drawn to journalism are interested in what happens from the ground up less than they are from the top down.

When you're interviewing someone, even your mother - you have to sort of deal with you have to get some objective space from yourself and the person but you also have to find what's the best way to get the information from that person.

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.

Anybody who's spent thirteen or fourteen years in print journalism has a lot of stories he thinks were inwardly satisfying as far as preparation, understanding, and diligence.

Journalism, to me, is just another drug - a free ride to scenes I'd probably miss if I stayed straight.

Journalism is one set of tools - one toolkit I have. One vocabulary, one lens.

Journalism is just the art of capturing behavior.

A lot of college graduates approach me about becoming screenwriters. I tell them, 'Do not become a screenwriter, become a journalist,' because journalists go into worlds that are not their own. Kids who go to Hollywood write coming-of-age stories for their first scripts, about what happened to them when they were sixteen. Then they write the summer camp script. At the age of twenty-three they haven't produced anything, and that's the end of the career.

There has been far too much of journalists deciding they are on the side of something and going out to get the story, instead of truth seeking which is a different thing.

Journalism is not writing.

I don't really think of 'Frontline' as a strictly public affairs series; I think of it as a work of journalism that is constantly reinventing itself.

I know better than to ever attempt to get a reporter removed from covering any topic. That would never be an option.

As a filmmaker, my approach is to come in not with preconceived notions, but with curiosity, and in that way, whether my subjects are James Carville or Anna Wintour or Dick Cheney, I am always surprised.

Few reporters get to do what Kelly McEvers does in every episode of 'Embedded': go deep into a story and tease out what is really happening.

Just ask my boss - any time a major story breaks, I'm banging on his door to send me.

With newspapers cutting foreign bureaus and budgets shrinking for long-form, investigative journalism, documentary filmmakers are often filling a void nowadays in the media landscape with their ability to spend time with their stories and subjects.

Writers interest me for their style, their obsessions, the ways in which they approach the world.

I am an old journalist, so I always do a lot of research and dive deep into people's character, who they are, and their motivation.

Journalism is about bringing people to an event or something that they couldn't attend.

I think it's sinful to give the audience material it knows already, whether the material is about race relations or the car culture or the depiction and placement of a candy bar.