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.
As a journalist, I know what it is like to incur the self-righteous wrath of people who denounce you for things you didn't say or didn't mean.
As I occasionally survey the pack of sycophantic shih tzus in the Washington press corps, wriggling on their bellies to kiss the feet of those in power, I feel plumb discouraged about the future of journalism.
Give news a little more time, and don't request that they also, in their news time, entertain. We're not entertainers. We're journalists. And we need more time to do our job well.
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.
If an investigative reporter finds out that someone has been robbing the store, that may be 'gotcha' journalism, but it's also good journalism.
The really tough thing would have been to decide to take Woodward and Bernstein off the story. They were carrying the coal for us - in that their stories were right.
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