Top 91 Investigative Quotes
#1. Having small children and being an investigative reporter would seem like a difficult mix, but it worked well for me. I was often working on my own enterprise stories, which were not as deadline sensitive.
Jill Abramson
#2. 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
Alma Guillermoprieto
#3. 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
#4. We were the first people who did investigative stuff, who asked occasionally abrasive, occasionally confrontational questions.
Mike Wallace
#5. Cherchez la femme" is good advice for investigative reporters. "Follow the money" is even better advice.
Ben Bradlee
#6. 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
#7. I learned a lot, investigative methodology - wise, from litigators - watching their process.
Sarah Stillman
#8. I want to be the greatest investigative reporter of my generation.
Michael Hastings
#9. Moving forward, investigative journalists need to train themselves to be media amphibians - just as comfortable with the classic verities of great journalism as they are with video, Twitter, Facebook, and, most importantly, citizen journalism.
Arianna Huffington
#10. With every book, you go back to school. You become a student. You become an investigative reporter. You spend a little time learning what it's like to live in someone else's shoes.
John Irving
#11. We have investigative staff who are charged by law and this committee under the Constitution of the United States has a responsibility, taxpayers' money, and an agency which we fund from the government, they bought weapons, we believe and we think that - I don't know who did what.
John Mica
#12. There is space for a different kind of investigative reporting that's about immersion and obsessive attention to detail and deep listening.
Sarah Stillman
#13. I want to help accelerate the evolution of the press because right now, newsrooms are cutting investigative journalists, and we need investigative journalists.
Craig Newmark
#14. In the United States, it's the mandate of the FBI to gather information relating to terrorism, go out and collect it, to do the interviews, to do the investigative work.
Robert Mueller
#15. 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.
#16. The spiritual quest was always the predominant aspect of my life. It's always been there. But there's also an incredible passion connected to it; it's not just a dry investigative process. I have been extremely emotional about it, and that comes out in the songs.
Cat Stevens
#17. 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
#18. 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
#19. I found in investigative journalism it is always best, if you have any language skills, not to admit them.
Julian Assange
#20. R.F. JACKABY
INVESTIGATIVE SERVICES
ASSISTANT WANTED
-$8 PER WEEK-
Must be literate and possess a keen intellect and open mind.
Strong stomach preferred.
Inquire at 926 Augur Lane.
Do not stare at the frog.
William Ritter
#21. 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
#22. Read like a detective and write like a conscientious investigative reporter.
David Coleman
#23. Rather than use the term 'profiling,' the profilers prefer to say they engage in criminal investigative analysis. That is because, besides developing profiles, the analysts offer a range of other advice, including personality assessments and interview techniques tailored to a particular offender.
Ronald Kessler
#24. Clearly independent journalists - domestic journalists - run a high risk if they dare to take on serious investigative work.
David Remnick
#25. 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
#26. I get called all kinds of things - an investigative comedian, a comedian activist - I've lost track of what my job title is.
Mark Thomas
#27. I am delighted to be joining 'Guardian U.S.'s team as a weekly columnist, and to have the chance to address American and global current events on its distinguished platform. 'Guardian U.S.' brings the 'Guardian's hard-hitting investigative brand to a new focus on American news and opinion.
Naomi Wolf
#28. 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
#29. All your doing is keeping wayward teenage punks off the street. You should leave the real investigative work to us big girls with the pens and paper.
Diane Moore
#30. I always knew I wanted to write, but I didn't know that I would want to do investigative reporting - in part because it seemed so ill-suited for my personality, or I thought it was ill-suited for my personality, insofar as I'm not very aggressive, and I'm not confrontational.
Sarah Stillman
#31. Advertisers don't want to put their ads next to the investigative story; it's extremely difficult to do that. And very few people today actually read those serious news stories on the Web now.
Pierre Omidyar
#32. 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.
#33. You know anything about investigative work?"
"Sure. Annoy the people involved until the guilt party tries to make you go away.
Ilona Andrews
#34. A hard-hitting investigative report that uncovers a nugget of genuine truth is the ultimate viral hit.
Annalee Newitz
#35. Technology has enabled government to have investigative and situational awareness on a scale and scope that were science fiction when the Stasi shut its doors.
Yochai Benkler
#36. 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
#37. 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
#38. 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
#39. I smiled. You mean like a psychic imprint? I know your assistant director of the Preternatural Division, and I mean no disrespect, but I never got the feeling you believed in magic as an investigative tool.'
From the book 9 Incarnate - Caitlin Diggs Series
Gary Starta
#40. 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
#41. Arguably the greatest technological triumph of the century has been the public-health system, which is sophisticated preventive and investigative medicine organized around mostly low- and medium-tech equipment; ... fully half of us are alive today because of the improvements.
Richard Rhodes
#42. Whether I'll get the chance to write fiction, I don't know. I could do political conspiracy thrillers, couldn't I? With an investigative journalist as the heroine.
Heather Brooke
#43. Peabody, you're an investigative slut.
J.D. Robb
#44. We have experienced an utter explosion in investigative techniques. Walk the streets, look at the cameras! They are now recognising people automatically from photos; we have DNA fingerprinting, infrascan photos that can identify you from the veins in your face.
Whitfield Diffie
#45. People shouldn't expect the mass media to do investigative stories. That job belongs to the 'fringe' media.
Ted Koppel
#46. Given the multiple crises we are living through, investigative journalism is all the more important.
Arianna Huffington
#47. At the core of investigative journalism is exactly the same thing that drives a page-turning thriller: telling a great story.
Hank Phillippi Ryan
#48. How did we ever get to a point where we need investigative journalists to tell us where our food comes from and nutritionists to determine the dinner menu?
Michael Pollan
#49. 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
#50. The thing that's been inhibiting long-form investigative reporting is fear - fear of being sued, of being unpopular, of being criticized by very powerful groups.
Eric Schlosser
#51. Where are reliable journalism and reliable investigative voices going to come from? I love the days of old - the Walter Cronkites, the Dan Rathers.
Jason Alexander
#52. My investigative technique mostly consisted of going through the list of interested parties and making as much noise as possible, until the culprit lost his patience and tried to shut me up.
Ilona Andrews
#53. The triumph of economic globalization has inspired a wave of techno-savvy investigative activists who are as globally minded as the corporations they track.
Naomi Klein
#54. It's one of the biggest fibs going that American newspapers are now being forced to give up their commitment to investigative reporting. Most of them gave up long ago as their greedy managements squeezed every cent out of the bottom line and turned their newsrooms into eunuchs.
Tina Brown
#55. A daily newspaper is destined to become like a weekly magazine. We'll be talking about what might happen tomorrow, with feature articles, investigative supplements, unexpected predictions ...
Umberto Eco
#56. I'm not an investigative journalist; I don't track crime or police blotters.
Kathryn Harrison
#57. The media do not set their own investigative agendas independently, but operate as part ... of the political establishment.
Peter Dale Scott
#58. Al journalism should be investigative, from football to cookery
John Pilger
#59. One thing I've discovered is that I never think of something that didn't work out as just "something that didn't work out." I think so often with investigative work, things that initially look like failures wind up leading to your biggest stories.
Sarah Stillman
#60. Whether it's long-form journalism or investigative journalism, it's no fun to just be the guy diagnosing the problem.
Clay Shirky
#61. What passes for investigative journalism is finding somebody with their pants down - literally or otherwise.
Robert Scheer
#62. I was doing an investigative article on arms trafficking that was taking me through Eastern Europe and the Middle East. And after I had interviewed a helicopter pilot who had been ferrying weapons into Liberia, I realized as I left the restaurant that I was being followed and set up for an ambush.
Peter Landesman
#63. You're an investigator - can't nobody find stuff out like a woman. Y'all put the police to shame, make the little investigative tricks they show on CSI and Law & Order: SVU look like counting lessons on Sesame Street.
Steve Harvey
#64. 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
#65. Each wave of sightings adds to the accumulation of reports which defy analysis by present methods ... An investigative process in depth is necessary here if, after twenty years of confusion, we want some answers.
J. Allen Hynek
#66. Quite frankly, I'm a member of the investigative committee, one of the senior members of the panel. I don't take our investigative facts and information from a magazine or some article.
John Mica
#67. Now as he watched Katie toying with a ring that wasn't there, he felt his old investigative instincts kick in. There'd been a husband, he thought; her husband was the missing element. Either she was still married or she wasn't, but he had an undeniable hunch that Katie was still afraid of him.
Nicholas Sparks
#68. 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
#69. With news, especially investigative pieces, you've got to be really smart and really lucky to be timely and to not get beaten by the big guys. You can't go head-to-head with the networks.
Bill Kurtis
#70. I think that some of the greatest muckrakers and some of the greatest investigative journalists of all time had strong feelings about civil rights. There is a role for the journalist-advocate. And as long as you play your cards on the table, I think that's a role that we should allow.
Pete Earley
#71. As an investigative reporter, I'm trying to uncover things and expose them to create a dialogue.
Eric Schlosser
#72. So much of our cultural representation of what an investigative journalist looks like, in movies and pop culture, is about this really testosterone-filled dude screaming, "Give me what you got!" I didn't see myself as someone who would be good at or comfortable with that.
Sarah Stillman
#73. From Chapter 1:
The main rub was the lack of RnR and I burned out. Three years and three stripes later, I ejected from the MP Corps, vowing I'd never do police or criminal investigative work again. Instead, I returned home when I should've learned better.
Ed Lynskey
#74. I think people ought to realize that if you're doing investigative reporting, you're putting something on your newspaper or on your website that no one can get anywhere else, and theoretically at least, that should make people subscribe.
Mark Ruffalo
#75. There have been as many investigative reporters on this newspaper working on Clinton's many problems as I can remember there were working on Watergate.
Ben Bradlee
#76. I think as an investigative reporter I had tough standards, but I don't think of myself as a tough person.
Jill Abramson
#77. Big business, for all its lobbying, is often put in line by investigative reporting, public scandals and multi-million-dollar judgments in court against those who put products on the market that are dangerous to their buyers.
Stanley Crouch
#78. Eli Hofstadter, Private Detective and Investigative services. I find
Callie Hart
#79. Note well that investigative journalism springs mostly from two sources: whistleblowers' leaks and beat reporters' expertise.
Jeff Jarvis
#80. You picked the seats you did for a reason, right? Familiarity. Too bad the best sleuths avoid familiarity. It dulls the investigative instinct.
Becca Fitzpatrick
#81. After Madrid, we intensified our investigative efforts once again, and we are in the process of bringing about expansions in security laws and creating an index file system.
Otto Schily
#82. For my film 'Fashion,' like an investigative journalist, I went about knowing the people, the models, the fashion designers. Similarly with the corporate world.
Madhur Bhandarkar
#83. We have built as a government something called the National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force, NCIJTF, where 19 federal agencies sit together and divide up the work. See the threat, see the challenge, divide it up and share information.
James Comey
#84. The aggressive use of wiretaps is important: It shows that we are targeting white-collar insider-trading rings with the same powerful investigative tools that have worked so successfully against the mob and drug cartels.
Preet Bharara
#85. Downworld?" Tessa echoed, puzzled. "Is that a place in London?"
"Never mind that," said Will. "I'm boasting of my investigative skills, and I would prefer to do it without interruption.
Cassandra Clare
#86. I don't believe newspaper reporters can substitute for a district attorney, but a newspaper has a very valid investigative role. Newspaper reports on corruption in government, racketeering and organized crime conditions can be very helpful to your communities and the whole country.
Robert Kennedy
#87. In order to have quality journalism you need to have a good income stream, and no Internet model has produced a way of generating income that would pay for good-quality investigative journalism.
Bill Bryson
#88. The old joke is that psychiatrists are doctors who can't stand the sight of blood. Maybe they can't stand it, but if they work where I work, they damn well better get used to it.
At least surgeons and prizefighters get to wear gloves
Mike Bartos
#89. Infiltrating the records of a state penitentiary as well as the state and federal court systems was much more fun than deciphering art. -Phil Roach
Aleatha Romig
#91. The Athenaeum always managed to have a scribe on hand whenever anything interesting seemed like it might happen. Durham avoided scribes, figuring that 'interesting' was not a word that was necessarily synonymous with 'pleasant'.
Jeffery Russell
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