Journalistic Risk Quotes

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.

I realized - I've been an opposition journalist in Russia for a long time. And I've often considered how real risks are and how much of a risk I can take.

The war correspondent has his stake - his life - in his own hands, and he can put it on this horse or that horse, or he can put it back in his pocket at the very last minute.

If information is true, if it can be verified, and if it's really important, the newspaper needs to be willing to take the risk associated with using unidentified sources.

It seems a waste, to me, for the sake of getting more colorful news, to send these men, who are not in any way concerned with the war [Spanish Civil War] which is going on and the principles at stake, into such positions of danger. Three men, two Americans and an Englishman, have died, and with apparent pride a formal announcement is made to the effect that we should realize what dangers correspondents go through to give us the news. To be sure, these men, not only go willingly, but often are anxious for the assignment. Personally, I would prefer to have those three men alive and a little less accurate and colorful news, and I am quite sure the majority of the people in the United States feel the same way. If men must die, let it be for their own convictions, not because they are sent out so we may read or see something more startling in our newspapers and newsreels.

Trump doesn't force the networks to show his rallies live rather than do real reporting. Nor does he force anyone to accept his phone calls rather than demand that he do a face-to-face interview that would be a greater risk for him.

I'm a writer of fiction. I try to write about my time, but it's dangerous if I'm seen as an investigative writer. I manipulate and change and control.

It is always a risk to speak to the press: they are likely to report what you say.

Journalism, for me, has always been a calling. There are things that must be exposed to the light, truths that must be uncovered, stories worth risking your life for.

... war reporting is still essentially the same - someone has to go there and see what is happening. You can't get that information without going to places where people are being shot at, and others are shooting at you. The real difficulty is having enough faith in humanity to believe that enough people, be they government, military or the man on the street, will care when your file reaches the printed page, the website or the TV screen.

The history of trying to start a daily where there already is one is that it has never worked.

I don't want to do anything that puts my team members, my camera people or producers, in danger, so it's an ongoing dialogue on all the stories that we do.

There are potentially many offences that journalists could commit in the course of their business. It would be very unhealthy if you had a situation where a journalist felt that they needed to go to their lawyer before they pursued any lead or asked any question.

My suggestion to newspapers everywhere is to give the public a reason to read them again. So here's an idea: get on a big story with widespread public appeal, devote your best resources to it, say a quiet prayer, and swing for the fences.

It's our job to get into the hardest-to-see places and bring back the best footage - we have the best footage of North Korea ever shot. If that's a stunt, then I'll keep on doing stunts until I die.

Reporters do decide what is news, but they don't invent it, even if they sometimes become part of the story by risking their lives in a danger zone, as in the case of ABC's Bob Woodruff and Doug Vogt.