Exposing Corruption Quotes

Investigative reporting is not a way to make friends.

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!

It upsets me that people think what I'm doing is a bad thing. I don't think it's a bad thing. If you know something to be a fact, why not report it?... If I have to drag some people screaming out of the closet, then I will.

I think the job of a good journalist, especially in Washington, is to create discomfort, and I think for a certain class of people, and for whom life is quite comfortable, I've created discomfort. So I take that as a badge of honor.

The journalist confines himself to the clean, gentlemanly work of exposing the griefs and shames of others.

We muckraked, not because we hated our world, but because we loved it. We were not hopeless, we were not cynical, we were not bitter.

James O'Keefe is a journalist, doing the work 'real' journalists don't dare, and has been conducting undercover investigations for years with dozens of scalps collected along the way. The more the 'true' journalists who back the Democrat machine attack him, the more emboldened he becomes to pursue his next project.

Investigative journalism has been relegated to a very, very tiny space in America. We don't really have much investigative journalism left. And the last refuge for it is documentary filmmaking.

Muck-raker

Secretive power loathes journalists who do their job: who push back screens, peer behind façades, lift rocks. Opprobrium from on high is their badge of honour.

Frankly, I think that the news industry is critically important because it points out things and surfaces truths that can often be uncomfortable. I think that that's working, and the spotlight has been pointed on things that we have a responsibility to do better, and I accept that.

It's up to comedians to shine the light on what's wrong in the world, and we don't want things swept under the rug.

the whole point of muck-raking, apart from all the jokes, is to try to do something about what you've been writing about. You may not be able to change the world but at least you can embarrass the guilty.

He [Robert F. Kennedy] is always on the lookout for a 'snow job,' impatient with evasion and imprecision, and relentless in his determination to get at the truth.

We are a democracy, and there is only one way to get a democracy on its feet in the matter of its individual, its social, its municipal, its State, its National conduct, and that is by keeping the public informed about what is going on.There isnot a crime, there isnot a dodge, there is not a trick, there is not a swindle, there is not a vice which does not live by secrecy.Get these things out in the open, describe them, attack them, ridicule them in the press, and sooner or later public opinion will sweep them away.

As a guerrilla journalist, I participate in the news by holding individuals who are in the news accountable through personal interactions. That involves confronting people in ambush interviews, secretly recording them, or engaging in a conversation with them when they are caught off guard.

A hard-hitting investigative report that uncovers a nugget of genuine truth is the ultimate viral hit.

I think politics is like an X-ray machine: Everything is found out eventually.

Journalism, some huge percentage of it, should be devoted to putting pressure on power, on nonsense, on chicanery of all kinds and if that's going to invite a lawsuit, well, bring it on.

Enlightenment is terror; when you light up the world, you make its filth clearer.

Recognition should come to the reporter who uncovers public cheating or proves a convicted man innocent.

Most of us entered journalism and joined 'news organizations' because we care about the greater good. We strive to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

Investigative reporting is the bone structure without which the journalistic body collapses. The Center for Public Integrity's constant and consistently enterprising investigative work is an invaluable contribution not only to journalism, but to society and to a healthy democracy

I feel like Valleywag has been different things with different writers over the years. Up and down. I think it's at their best when they get a legitimate scoop, like when someone leaks them documents. I feel like we could do more of that, breaking stories.

We "muckraked" not because we hated our world but because we loved it.