Top 60 Investigative Quotes

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.

Scouting is like CIA work and investigative work. You create a lot of stuff and try a lot of stuff. Some works and some doesn’t. I try to get creative.

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.

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.

The great thing about celebrity culture is that they can’t seem to stop themselves from displaying their ridiculous behaviour. I feel it’s my job as a serious investigative journalist to witness all kinds of behaviour and then report back to the audience through the prism of my own anger and bitterness.

As an investigative filmmaker, I helped expose atrocities committed by ISIS against women and girls. They are evil, and we have to stop them.

A hard-hitting investigative report that uncovers a nugget of genuine truth is the ultimate viral hit.

Enacting the role of an investigative officer was like living my childhood dream!

I want to be the greatest investigative reporter of my generation.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I’ve done a lot of investigative reporting, and I’ve confronted a lot of people over the years, sometimes in dark, foreign places. But to do it over and over again in such a short period of time, it’s emotionally and physically draining.

The modern economics of the newsroom don’t support big investigative reporting staffs.

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.

I studied journalism and was idealistic as a student. In course of time, I learnt that there’s a lot of politics, and it’s not easy to put forth your point of view as an investigative journalist.

If you went and did a microscopic investigative report at Kentucky, Kansas, Duke, Carolina, Indiana – what are you talking about? You’re always going to have some stuff come out that will be looked upon as not being good.

Investigative journalism is never mass-based; it’s very focused, and you want people who are passionate about it to take it.

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.

The seed idea for Rappler really is looking at information cascades. If you think about it, the end goal – when I was raising money for Rappler, I didn’t talk about investigative journalism, even though that’s our core.

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 Federal Bureau of Investigation has long been regarded as our nation’s premier federal investigative agency.

There will be occasions when someone has suffered a crime where it is either obvious that they are not looking for an investigation or that there are no investigative opportunities and you just have to be up front about that.

When I was a kid, what captivated me about detective fiction were the puzzles more than the detectives or their enemies. And as I’ve gotten older, I see a lot of merit in setting your investigative sights higher than figuring out how someone stole Encyclopedia Brown’s bicycle.

I’m not an investigative journalist; I don’t track crime or police blotters.

I’m a reasonably accomplished journalist. I’ve worked as an investigative journalist, I’ve done crime beat stuff.

Whether it’s long-form journalism or investigative journalism, it’s no fun to just be the guy diagnosing the problem.

Seymour Hersh is one of the giants of investigative journalism.

I worked for a private investigative agency briefly. I rarely had the opportunity to snoop.

If I wasn’t a writer/director, I would be an investigative journalist. There’s something about being an undercover journalist. I mean, that’s freakin’ cool!

The kind of in-depth investigative journalism we practice at ‘Frontline’ is thoughtful, rigorous, and time-intensive. It requires us to constantly seek untold stories and to give our producers and reporters the time and resources to dig into them deeply.

The main reasons for the growth and institutionalization of corruption are: a culture of secrecy with lack of transparency, and weak institutions for securing the accountability of public servants, such as the Vigilance bodies, the criminal investigative agencies and the judiciary.

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.

We in the FBI have created a malware repository and analysis tool known as the Binary Analysis Characterization and Storage System, or BACSS, which provides near real-time investigative information. BACSS helps us link malware in different jurisdictions and paint a picture of cyber threats worldwide.

I get called all kinds of things – an investigative comedian, a comedian activist – I’ve lost track of what my job title is.

Our Constitution in many situations rightly demands a warrant or order before we take investigative steps. And the FISC provides that vital, independent oversight.

As a former FBI counterintelligence agent who investigated foreign propaganda cases, I’ve seen firsthand how foreign intelligence services leverage American freedoms – and the constitutional limitations on the FBI’s investigative power – to their advantage.

To understand the current state of mind of both Sara Paretsky and her private detective alter ego, one must first roll back the clock to 1982, when Victoria Iphegenia Warshawski took her first investigative bow in ‘Indemnity Only.’

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.

I do believe when there are advances in technology that it is important to balance the privacy interests affected with the investigative take that you might get from that technology.

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.

With newspapers cutting foreign bureaus and budgets shrinking for long-form, investigative journalism, documentary filmmakers are often filling a void nowadays in the media landscape with their ability to spend time with their stories and subjects.

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.

I’m fortunate to work for a company that supports investigative journalism with strong editors and lawyers. That’s the benefit of working for a company that’s been around for more than a century.

What passes for investigative journalism is finding somebody with their pants down – literally or otherwise.

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.

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.