I used to have trust with reporters. Give them scoops. Those were the old days. It's very strange, when you give a story and it doesn't come out the right way.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I don't trust a lot of journalists.
Most reporters who come to me get their stories directly from press releases. Very few do what one would consider to be their professional duty.
Sometimes, in a fictional story, you can be more honest and truthful, actually. As a journalist, you're a prisoner of the data, in effect. You have to tell the story with evidence you can verify.
A basic rule of life for reporters is that you should spend your time talking with and learning about people who are not sending you press releases, rather than those who are.
Strange bonds of trust and self-deception tend to grow between journalists and their subjects.
I try very hard to maintain the confidence of my sources by speaking candidly with them, honoring agreements about the use of our conversation, and practicing journalism in an honest and straightforward way.
What you realize hanging out with investigative reporters is that, while they may be personally liberal, they don't let that get in the way of a good story.
Okay, I'm not in the news business, and I'm not going to tell anyone how to do their job. However, it'd be good to have news reporting that I could trust again, and there's evidence that fact-checking is an idea whose time has come.
I think every journalist understands when they are the beneficiary of hot information that, yes, they have a scoop, but they're also being used. Part of your responsibility as a journalist is to tell the story of why that information is coming to you, consistent with the ground rules of your sourcing.
Any journalist worth his or her salt wouldn't trust me.