Quotes By Jim Lehrer

My own view, there is a need for and a demonstrated need for more journalism now than there ever has been.

I'm a journalist and that's what I do.

There's always a germ of truth in just about everything.

The shouting and opinion and jokes don't exist if there isn't first a story.

I have great faith in the intelligence of the American viewer and reader to put two and two together and come up with four.

My writing is extremely important, so I write every day. I just enjoy it. I get a kick out of it.

Preparation is based on one driving force for me and that is to be relaxed enough to be able to listen to what the candidates are saying and react appropriately.

You want to see an angry person? Let me hear a cell phone go off.

If people want bells and whistles and all of that, there are bells and whistles available. If they don't want bells and whistles there are places to go where they are not available.

One of the problems is that everybody is used to the old-fashioned debate system, which is very controlled, and where the moderator plays a more active role.

In television there are only about 12 people who do what I do.

I started as a print reporter.

We have increasingly fewer and fewer journalists who have any military experience and understand what life is like in the military and in combat.

Those who know me know I won't hesitate to turn around and point someone out.

I wanted to be a bus driver when I was a kid. I look at bus driving through the eyes of a little boy. I see it as glamorous.

As I say, I'm a discourse advocate. What form it comes is less important to me than the fact that there is discourse.

Well, to tell you truth, I have learned a long time ago that the trick when doing a debate, any kind of debate, is to just turn off the judgment switch in my head.

I'm an expert on the NewsHour and it isn't how I practice journalism. I am not involved in the story. I serve only as a reporter or someone asking questions. I am not the story.

In my case, I was covering politics in Texas as a newspaper man in the 1960's.

I've always said this and finally I had a chance to demonstrate it: The moderator should be seen little and heard even less. It is up to the candidates to ask the follow-up questions and challenge one another.

I'm not in the being-annoyed business.

If we're going to have debates, let's have real debates.

There are very few really stark black and white stories.

Best I can do for them is to give them every piece of information I can find and let them make the judgments. That's just my basic view of my function as a journalist.

On a daily basis there are some huge ones that are, sure, from time to time, but it is helping the reader sort through all this sort of gray stuff out there.

Most of the stories I have covered in 45 years have been gray stories.

I came from a family of Marines into the family of Marines.

Well, I don't know about objectivity, but I know for certain that it's always possible for a professional journalist who understands what he or she's up to to be fair, and that's the key word. Fairness to individuals, fairness to ideas, and to issues and whatever - that is critical, and that is also part and parcel of what the job.

I'm not in the judgment part of journalism.

People can get their news any way they want. What I love about what's happened is that there are so many different avenues, there are so many different outlets, so many different ways to debate and discuss and to inquire about any given news story.