Investigative Journalism Quotes

The Huffington Post Investigative Fund's goal is to produce a broad range of investigative journalism created by both staff reporters and freelance writers, with a focus on working with the many experienced reporters and writers impacted by the economic contraction. The pieces will range from long-form investigations to short breaking news stories and will be presented in a variety of media - including text, audio, and video. ~ Arianna Huffington

When radio keeps silent, our ears shall never hear the real details! ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

One day soon, you'll hear a car pull up to your curb, an engine cut out. You'll hear footsteps coming up your front walk. Like they did for Edward Wayne Edwards, twenty-nine years after he killed Timothy Hack and Kelly Drew, in Sullivan, Wisconsin. Like they did for Kenneth Lee Hicks, thirty years after he killed Lori Billingsley, in Aloha, Oregon.

The doorbell rings.

No side gates are left open. You're long past leaping over a fence. Take one of your hyper, gulping breaths. Clench your teeth. Inch timidly toward the insistent bell.

This is how it ends for you.

"You'll be silent forever, and I'll be gone in the dark," you threatened a victim once.

Open the door. Show us your face.

Walk into the light. ~ Michelle McNamara

The journalists in America are no longer covering critical stories. Investigative journalism is gone. Foreign-news coverage is gone. The press is owned by five giant corporations. ~ Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

There's some irony in playing a journalist after some of the stuff that has been written about me, but it's a great profession, particularly investigative journalism. ~ James Nesbitt

I have been in recent years the author of a bestiary and director of some atlas projects; I've written criticism, editorials, reports from a few front lines, letters, a great many political essays ... , more personal stuff, essays for artists' books, and more ... Nonfiction is the whole realm from investigative journalism to prose poems, from manifestos to love letters, from dictionaries to packing lists. ~ Rebecca Solnit

This book is not a scholarly volume, it is not a piece of investigative journalism, and most emphatically it is not a work of theory. It is a selection of commentaries and conversations in the long tradition of Balkan socialist propaganda. (p.14) ~ Andrej Grubacic

The print magazine and print journalism industry is obviously in a great deal of trouble, and one of the things that happened when this business started to give way to the Internet and to broadcast television is that a lot of organizations started cutting specifically investigative journalism and they also started cutting fact-checkers. ~ Matt Taibbi

There's a lot of hand-wringing going on about the death of journalism and particularly the death of investigative journalism. What I see is that there is more need than ever to have experienced information processors - people who can look through this mass of data. ~ Heather Brooke

What passes for investigative journalism is finding somebody with their pants down - literally or otherwise. ~ Robert Scheer

My first real writing job was at 'Rolling Stone,' so I wrote about rock-and-roll and politics and the like. At the time, I really didn't know what I wanted to write, and I did a bunch of investigative journalism. ~ Tim Cahill

The focus of entertainment is taking away from what the public needs as news. I think investigative journalism will always be important and always find its way, be it on the Internet or wherever. ~ Robert Redford

Given the multiple crises we are living through, investigative journalism is all the more important. ~ Arianna Huffington

Reality is an aspect of property. It must be seized. And investigative journalism is the noble art of seizing reality back from the powerful. ~ Julian Assange

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. ~ Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

I found in investigative journalism it is always best, if you have any language skills, not to admit them. ~ Julian Assange

I firmly believe in a hybrid future where old media players embrace the ways of new media (including transparency, interactivity, and immediacy), and new media companies adopt the best practices of old media (including fairness, accuracy, and high-impact investigative journalism). ~ Arianna Huffington

We like long-form narrative journalism, and we feel there aren't enough high-profile outlets in Canada running the kind of stories we want to showcase - long, meaty, thoughtful, investigative. ~ Lynn Coady

Whether it's long-form journalism or investigative journalism, it's no fun to just be the guy diagnosing the problem. ~ Clay Shirky

As the newspaper industry continues to contract, one of the most commonly voiced fears is that serious investigative journalism will be among the victims of the scaleback. And, indeed, many newspapers are drastically reducing their investigative teams. ~ Arianna Huffington

Freedom of the press is not questioned when investigative journalism unearths scandals, But that does not mean that every classified state document should be made available to journalists. ~ Otto Schily

As someone who has spent a lot of her career as an investigative reporter, I'll confess that a frustration of mine has always been that so much investigative journalism involves a dissection of events in the past. ~ Jill Abramson

Cherchez la femme" is good advice for investigative reporters. "Follow the money" is even better advice. ~ Ben Bradlee

The thinner a newspaper or magazine is - due to reduced revenue from advertising dollars - the less editorial content because of the standard ad-to-editorial ratio, and the less money there is to support investigative journalism. ~ Lynda Resnick

Exposing corruption, brandishing truth. ~ Chris Cleave

Journalists need experts as badly as experts need journalists. ~ Steven D. Levitt

Journalism consists in buying white paper at two cents a pound and selling it at ten cents a pound. ~ Charles A. Dana

Serious journalism need not be solemn. ~ Russell Baker

Evidently there are plenty of people in journalism who have neither got what they liked nor quite grown to like what they get. They write pieces they do not much enjoy writing, for papers they totally despise, and the sad process ends by ruining their style and disintegrating their personality, two developments which in a writer cannot be separate, since his personality and style must progress or deteriorate together, like a married couple in a country where death is the only permissible divorce. ~ Claud Cockburn

I believe that the demand for long-form quality journalism is strong and I think that despite all of the changes in technology over the past few years, people still want in-depth, rigorous reporting. ~ Chris Hughes

Don't tell me about the Press. I know *exactly* who reads the papers. The Daily Mirror is read by the people who think they run the country. The Guardian is read by people who think they *ought* to run the country. The Times is read by the people who actually *do* run the country. The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country. The Financial Times is read by people who *own* the country. The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by *another* country. The Daily Telegraph is read by the people who think it is.'

"Prime Minister, what about the people who read The Sun?"

"Sun readers don't care *who* runs the country - as long as she's got big tits. ~ Antony Jay

This ball was so crowded that it took me - a trained professional journalist with vast experience in this area - forty five minutes to get a beer. ~ Dave Barry

Italian journalism is free because it serves one cause and one purpose ... mine! ~ Benito Mussolini

I swear it only hit me then, with full conscious force, who the real villains of this piece had been from start to finish…those lying, cancerous dogs of the mainstream media! ~ Paul Christensen

Poetry allows me to write about what I don't know, whereas journalism demands a higher level of certainty to be worthy of being written. ~ Eliza Griswold

The type of journalism that relies on the reporter's notion of what does or doesn't "seem" correct or controversial is self-indulgent and irresponsible. It gives credence to the belief that we can intuit our way through all the various decisions we need to make in our lives and it validates the notion that our feelings are a more reliable barometer of reality than the facts. ~ Seth Mnookin

The media, like anything else, can be bought. Everything, it seems, has its price. Even the free press. ~ Lance Morcan

I'm not knocking the wholesale grocery business or any other, but there is a kind of romance in journalism which some people, the lucky ones, feel inside them all their lives. ~ Charles Kuralt

Olympianism is the characteristic belief system of today's secularist, and it has itself many of the features of a religion. For one thing, the fusion of political conviction and moral superiority into a single package resembles the way in which religions (outside liberal states) constitute comprehensive ways of life supplying all that is necessary (in the eyes of believers) for salvation. Again, the religions with which we are familiar are monotheistic and refer everything to a single center. In traditional religions, this is usually God; with Olympianism, it is society, understood ultimately as including the whole of humanity. And Olympianism, like many religions, is keen to proselytize. Its characteristic mode of missionary activity is journalism and the media.

If Olympianism has the character of a religion, as I am suggesting, there would be no mystery about its hostility to Christianity. Real religions (by contrast with test-tube religions such as ecumenism) don't much like each other; they are, after all, competitors. Olympianism, however, is in the interesting position of being a kind of religion which does not recognize itself as such, and indeed claims a cognitive superiority to religion in general. But there is a deeper reason why the spread of Olympianism may be measured by the degree of Christophobia. It is that Olympianism is an imperial project which can only be hindered by the association between Christianity and the West. ~ Kenneth Minogue

I don't believe that there's such a thing as objectivity in much of journalism, but I think there is a serious effort to and a regard for facts and into taking that stuff seriously is very important to the public discourse and it's very important to democracy. ~ Jann Wenner

Journalists aren't supposed to praise things. It's a violation of work rules almost as serious as buying drinks with our own money or absolving the CIA of something. ~ P. J. O'Rourke

Well, to be honest I think I tell less truth when I write journalism than when I write fiction. ~ Julian Barnes

When I finished grad school, I sort of fell into journalism. Someone mentioned that there was an entry-level job at the Reuters News Agency. I applied, and, to my amazement, I got the job. ~ Wolf Blitzer

The reason I often say, for me, photography is analogous to poetry, for my kind of work more so than journalism, is because it's so open to interpretation. And I'm very happy having different interpretations of it. ~ Alec Soth

Liberal humanists now seem to dominate the fields of art, journalism, and communication, which are powerful and uniquely able to spread anti-Christian thought. ~ Tim LaHaye

It was while making newspaper deliveries, trying to miss the bushes and hit the porch, that I first learned the importance of accuracy in journalism. ~ Charles Osgood

Journalism has become the art of "intelligent anticipation of events." ~ Mahatma Gandhi

I was a journalist and I liked to watch. I was in awe. ~ Nora Ephron

Without a serious study of journalism, there can be no understanding of citizenship, democracy, or community. ~ Roy Peter Clark

We define journalism in America as the business and practice of presenting the news of the day in the interest of economic privilege. ~ Upton Sinclair

Journalism is a kind of profession, or craft, or racket, for people who never wanted to grow up and go out into the real world. ~ Harry Reasoner

Folks, Brian Williams isn't the exception. He's exactly what they've taught us to expect from them all. It's not journalism any more - it's entertainment, it's celebrity, it's agendas and it's money. All too often, a lie is now an acceptable way of communicating. To the media, a lie has as much value as the truth. ~ Wayne LaPierre

I've been able to write at least one book a year for 20 years, and I don't think I would've had that kind of drive if I hadn't come out of the journalism business. ~ Michael Connelly

Dickens was born in 1812 and died in 1870, having produced fifteen novels, many of which can confidently be called great, as well as having accomplished outstanding work in activities into which his insatiable need to expend his vast energies - to achieve, to prevail - carried him: journalism, editing, acting, social reform. ~ Robert Gottlieb

We've seen how grassroots journalism by blogs has had an impact at various points politically, as ordinary people have amplified stories that were being ignored by the traditional press. ~ Jimmy Wales

One of the reporters must have flunked journalism school because he asked a question that went straight to the point. ~ P. J. O'Rourke

When I say that I went to grad school in Iowa City, people often assume that I went to the famed writers' workshop MFA program at the University of Iowa. I didn't. I got a master's in journalism. ~ Chelsea Cain

A man doesn't amount to something because he has been successful at a third-rate career like journalism. It is evidence, that's all: evidence that if he buckled down and worked hard, he might some day do something really worth doing. ~ Russell Baker

Journalism is the entertainment business. ~ Frank Herbert

One of our worst traits in journalism is that when we have a narrative in our minds, we often plug in anecdotes that confirm it. Thus we managed to portray President Gerald Ford, a first-rate athlete, as a klutz. ~ Nicholas Kristof

I chose Journalism by default. I always loved TV, and I had no idea what else to do, so I studied what interested me. ~ Frank Caliendo

I escaped from an interview with that laboratory-loving doctor, Ag O. Nee, just barely by the shadow of my Nosey nose! ~ I.B. Nosey

So much of journalism is conveying a place and time that existed, to someone at a later date: giving a person the context and trying to make them feel as informed as if they were actually there. ~ Chris Milk

Do not read the newspapers. ~ Henry David Thoreau

If I beat my grandmother to death to-morrow in the middle of Battersea Park, you may be perfectly certain that people will say everything about it except the simple and fairly obvious fact that it is wrong. Some will call it insane; that is, will accuse it of a deficiency of intelligence. This is not necessarily true at all. You could not tell whether the act was unintelligent or not unless you knew my grandmother. Some will call it vulgar, disgusting, and the rest of it; that is, they will accuse it of a lack of manners. Perhaps it does show a lack of manners; but this is scarcely its most serious disadvantage. Others will talk about the loathsome spectacle and the revolting scene; that is, they will accuse it of a deficiency of art, or aesthetic beauty. This again depends on the circumstances: in order to be quite certain that the appearance of the old lady has definitely deteriorated under the process of being beaten to death, it is necessary for the philosophical critic to be quite certain how ugly she was before. Another school of thinkers will say that the action is lacking in efficiency: that it is an uneconomic waste of a good grandmother. But that could only depend on the value, which is again an individual matter. The only real point that is worth mentioning is that the action is wicked, because your grandmother has a right not to be beaten to death. But of this simple moral explanation modern journalism has, as I say, a standing fear. It will call the action anythi ~ G.K. Chesterton

I think that a failure of statistical thinking is the major intellectual shortcoming of our universities, journalism and intellectual culture. ~ Steven Pinker

Journalism is not like fiction and will never be. In fiction, you can feed people with lies, yet at the end of the reading, people still live the same life - go to work, eat, come back home, and sleep - nothing really changes aside from, at the very least, their perception of the world. But, things are different in journalism. You tell people a barefaced life, they will believe it, and something is going to happen. People will promptly respond to what they believe is true because it relates to their life, and we take life seriously, don't we? ~ Aishah Madadiy

You're miserable, edgy and tired. You're in the perfect mood for journalism. ~ Warren Ellis

The advent of the internet has made so many things possible. Self- published recreational journalism has always been around; but back when you had to at least learn to run a mimeograph, and you had to pay postage to distribute your deathless prose, people who didn't actually have much to say for themselves found other hobbies ~ Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Journalism is an act of faith in the future ~ Ann Curry

The history of the GDR journalism is a story of partisanship. ~ Patrick Conley

Social media is the greatest boon to journalism since the printing press. ~ Vivian Schiller