Investigative Journalism Quotes

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

  Robert Scheer

  Umpires, Pants, Journalism

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• 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

  Mean, Scandal, Doe

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• Don't count out other amazing programming like Frontline. You will still find more hours of in-depth news programming, investigative journalism and analysis on PBS than on any other outlet.

  Gwen Ifill

  Pbs, Depth, Analysis

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• 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

  Cutting, Organization, Giving

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• 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

  Jobs, Real, Writing

  "Wild Life: An Interview With Tim Cahill". Interview with Erik Kancler, www.motherjones.com. March 25, 2005.

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• At the core of investigative journalism is exactly the same thing that drives a page-turning thriller: telling a great story.

  Hank Phillippi Ryan

  Pages Turning, Stories, Journalism

  "Interview: Hank Phillippi Ryan, 'The Other Woman'". Interview with Pamela Clare, happyeverafter.usatoday.com. October 4, 2012.

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

  Arianna Huffington

  Important, Journalism, Given

  "Announcing the Launch of the Huffington Post Investigative Fund" by Arianna Huffington, www.huffingtonpost.com. April 29, 2009.

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• 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

  Art, Powerful, Reality

  Julian Assange (2011). “Julian Assange: The Unauthorised Autobiography”, p.120, Canongate Books

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• It's very difficult to measure the impact on policy of any investigative journalism. You hope it matters to let a little more truth loose in the world, but you can't always be sure it does. You do it because there's a story to be told. I can tell you that the job of trying to tell the truth about people whose job it is to hide the truth is about as complicated and difficult as trying to hide it in the first place.

  Bill Moyers

  Jobs, Impact, People

  Source: progressive.org

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• If an investigative reporter finds out that someone has been robbing the store, that may be 'gotcha' journalism, but it's also good journalism.

  Ben Bradlee

  May, Journalism, Robbing

  "Watergate: 25 Years Later". Online discussion, www.washingtonpost.com. June 17, 1997.

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• 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

  Frustration, Past, Careers

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• 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.

  America, Corporations, Covering

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• Investigative journalism and reporting has become much more dangerous. This is especially true for journalists and sources in National Security - but it has been getting pretty bad for beat reporters and small outlets doing local reporting, too.

  Chelsea Manning

  Journalism, Outlets, Beats

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• It is part of what makes America great. That tradition of the free press, and also the tradition of this highly competitive market for investigative journalism. We're seeing, there's no question, that we're seeing a renaissance of that.

  Ben H. Winters

  America, Renaissance, Journalism

  Source: www.slate.com

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• 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.

  America, Space, Documentaries

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• 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

  Team, Serious, Journalism

  "Announcing the Launch of the Huffington Post Investigative Fund" By Arianna Huffington, www.huffingtonpost.com. April 29, 2009.

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• I've talked about how the future of journalism will be a hybrid future where traditional 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

  Believe, Player, Impact

  "Huffington hits out at Murdoch speech" by Mercedes Bunz, www.theguardian.com. December 2, 2009.

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• I think the media has become incredibly corrupt. We used to have a profound tradition of investigative journalism in the United States. Some journalists were real heroes, such as Bob Woodward who helped uncover the Watergate scandal. But today he is leading the opposite charge, trying to bring down the careers of people and score easy victories. In other words, those who used to bust the status quo have now become the status quo.

  Marianne Williamson

  Real, Hero, Thinking

  Source: scottlondon.com

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• No one is safe from Mattera’s hard-hitting, meticulously reported, and genuinely funny investigative journalism. CRAPITALISM blows the lid off crony capitalism.

  Monica Crowley

  Blow, Hitting, Safe

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• Real crime-beat investigative journalism does seem to be really dwindling, especially in this age with everything being centered around iPhones. Everyone's a journalist today, essentially. Every pedestrian on the street has the potential of capturing a big story on their mobile device and then selling it and making a lot of money.

  Megan Fox

  Real, Iphone, Age

  "What Megan Fox Looks for in a Man (and Turtle)". Interview with J. Rentilly, www.menshealth.com. August 8, 2014.

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• I certainly don't mean to suggest that all investigative journalism prior to 9/11 in the US was praiseworthy. But there were more examples to which one could point, and there were at last some activist photographers who understood that getting information into the public sphere in spite of military censorship was a right and obligation within democracy. That strain in war journalism did nearly vanish during that time.

  Judith Butler

  Military, War, Mean

  Interview with Cihan Aksan and Jon Bailes, www.counterpunch.org. October 11, 2013.

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• 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

  Support, Dollars, Magazines

  "Finding the Voice of Truth Amid the Noise of Old and New Media" by Lynda Resnick, www.huffingtonpost.com. September 21, 2009.

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

  Julian Assange

  Skills, Journalism, Language

  "Julian Assange: my life in the embassy". Interview with John Hiscock, www.telegraph.co.uk. October 14, 2013.

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• 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

  News Stories, Media, Long

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