Paul F. Tompkins Quotes

I don't think fairness means that you give equal time to every point of view no matter how marginal. You weigh the sides, you do some truth-testing, you apply judgment to them.

Just because it's in print doesn't mean it's the gospel.

It is necessary to judge accurately the things that rest on opinion

Either data supports the observations or they don't. Voting doesn't work in science.

I would be lying if I said the journalism doesn't reflect my own choices as a reporter and a writer: what to say, what to emphasize, how to say it, what is true or untrue.

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.

You know, an opinion can be right or wrong.

The individual source of the statistics may easily be the weakest link.

I'm not being naive; I realise there's no such thing as a pure reading. But I'd rather keep myself as far out of it as I can.

Whenever we say a person's name, notice whether we have stated more than a fact. For example, the judgment, 'She's thoughtless' goes beyond the facts 'She said she'd call me and she didn't.'

The ways in which readers encounter and relate to information is dramatically influenced by their education as well as their awareness of the pitfalls relating to the information source.

Unlike with the majority of library books, when you enter a term into a search engine there is no guarantee that what you will find is authoritative, accurate or even vaguely true.

No statement should be believed because it is made by an authority.

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.

You shouldn't use anything as the sole source for anything, in my view.

I don't edit information, I follow it.

Documentary film without nuanced journalistic sourcing risks being sensational, tendentious or broad-brushed.

The most difficult thing for a manager to determine is when a fact is really a fact.

History consists of facts attested to by evidence.

Every form of evidence has its flaws …

Clearly, you can't believe everything you read in the press.

If you only hear one side of the story, at some point, you have to question who the writer is.

It really doesn't matter if it happened exactly how I say it happened.

When people write about someone else, you have to take it with a pinch of salt.

If something is presented as a fact, it has to be correct.