The Center for Public Integrity is the real thing. A group of dedicated people who remember that great journalism is about grit and guts and stamina and razor-sharp instincts. They are, thank heaven, here to stay.
Interpretation
Great journalism requires dedication, instincts, and perseverance.
Diane Sawyer emphasizes the importance of commitment and resilience in journalism, highlighting the qualities that make a group like the Center for Public Integrity vital. She celebrates their existence as a beacon of integrity amidst a challenging landscape, suggesting that without such dedicated individuals, the quality of journalism would suffer.
In practice
In a speech about media ethics, I could quote Diane Sawyer to highlight the importance of integrity in journalism.
I read once, which I loved so much, that this great physicist who won a Nobel Prize said that every day when he got home, his dad asked him not what he learned in school but his dad said, 'Did you ask any great questions today?' And I always thought, what a beautiful way to educate kids that we're excited by their questions, not by our answers and whether they can repeat our answers.
I think the one lesson I have learned is that there is no substitute for paying attention.
If you're curious, you'll probably be a good journalist because we follow our curiosity like cats.
People assume you can't be shy and be on television. They're wrong.
I'm always fascinated by the way memory diffuses fact.
Follow what you are genuinely passionate about and let that guide you to your destination.
The Post-Dispatch will serve no party but the people; be no organ of Republicanism, but the organ of truth; will follow no causes bit its conclusions; will not support the Administration, but criticize it; will oppose all frauds and shams wherever or whatever they are; will advocate principles and ideas rather than prejudices and partisanship.
Newspapers that are truly independent, like The Washington Post, can still aggressively investigate anyone or anything with no holds barred.
We all have our likes and our dislikes. But... when we're doing news - when we're doing the front-page news, not the back page, not the op-ed pages, but when we're doing the daily news, covering politics - it is our duty to be sure that we do not permit our prejudices to show. That is simply basic journalism.
Budget cuts are a sad reality in most newsrooms, and I am concerned that they reduce the collective muscle of journalists who are doing the expensive, and often dangerous, work of on-the-ground reporting.
I violated, apparently, an unspoken rule that we are supposed to take care of our own. Frankly, if that invites discomfort, I welcome it. I don't think there's enough discomfort in journalism, especially in Washington.
Whenever you're reporting, there's always something you can't say or write, but the questions, you always want to get as close to that line as possible. You want to ask the tough questions.
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