Carl Bernstein Quotes (14 Quotes)

Beyond this, I can only give you my personal assurance that our sole motivation in working on 'The Final Days' was to report the truth neither money nor any preconceived disposition regarding Mr. Nixon was a factor in our reporting.

The failures of the press have contributed immensely to the emergence of a talk-show nation, in which public discourse is reduced to ranting and raving and posturing.

During the past year, he'd pressed Woodward to tell him the name, arguing that the current editor should know the identity of our source. Woodward had resisted.

It was not about a break-in, a single break-in. It was about a pattern of illegal activities involving beating up members of the political opposition physically, stealing their memos, wiretapping political opponents, breaking into offices of psychiatrists, firebombing think tanks,

Not on a paper run by a media conglomerate, ... And the public may not react with the same indignation.

The lowest form of popular culture - lack of information, misinformation, disinformation, and a contempt for the truth or the reality of most people's lives - has overrun real journalism. Today, ordinary Americans are being stuffed with garbage.

We had very little time -- Bob and Felt in the garage together had very little time to have meetings and conversations in the course of a couple years. The object was to get as much information, as much context, as much certainty of things we had obtained elsewhere,

better understanding of finding the truth in politics.

Our news organizations and our reporters should be going after the best obtainable truth, not the sensational, on-the-surface truth ... But instead of going after the truth, we look through the lens of how much it will cost and of those who would like us not to tell the truth.

The pressure to compete, the fear somebody else will make the splash first, creates a frenzied environment in which a blizzard of information is presented and serious questions may not be raised.

The greatest felony in the news business today is to be behind, or to miss a big story. So speed and quantity substitute for thoroughness and quality, for accuracy and context.

We had no idea of his motivations. And even now some of his motivations are unclear.

For the first time, the weird and the stupid and the coarse are becoming our cultural norms, even our cultural ideal.

the best obtainable version of the truth. It's a simple concept, but difficult to do.