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.
I take a certain pride in having maintained a reputation for fast copy throughout my newspaper career. Fast-breaking stories left my typewriter in a hurry. Not great literature, perhaps, but fast, and usually accurate.
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.
If an investigative reporter finds out that someone has been robbing the store, that may be 'gotcha' journalism, but it's also good journalism.
I joined the 'Times' in 1972, and I came with the mark of Cain on me because I was clearly against the war. But my editor, Abe Rosenthal, he hired me because he liked stories. He used to come to the Washington bureau and almost literally pat me on the head and say, 'How is my little Commie today? What do you have for me?'
The most important ethical issues and the most difficult ones are the human ones because a reporter has enormous power to hurt people.
My inclination, as an old-school, classically trained journalist, is not to go with a story unless I have it hard. It's not good enough to say something based on rumors that were flying around.
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