Journalists Quotes
More Journalists Quotes
It's a truism that denials never quite catch up with charges. Honest Journalists who may have mistakenly printed false information know that the most prominent retraction never quite undoes the damage done by the original publication.
— Tom Wicker, "In the Nation; Lesson of Lattimore" (June 9, 1989), The New York Times.
Sometimes, I genuinely enjoy having conversations with Journalists; enjoying the few moments of intimacy with a stranger is fascinating to me. But once in a while that backfires and you're suddenly reading something that has a bent on it that you didn't feel was in the least bit a part of the conversation that you thought you were having. Then you get overly protective and say very little and then you come out of the hole again.
gillian anderson— The Observer staff (October 1, 2000 ) "Review: Interview: The truth is out here: X-files star Gillian Anderson has rejected the lure of Hollywood for the austere style of cult British director Terence Davies. What is she thinking of...", The Observer.
We must express the view, based on our empirical observations, that a substantial number of Journalists are ignorant, lazy, opinionated, and intellectually dishonest. The profession is heavily cluttered with aged hacks toiling through a miasma of mounting decrepitude and often alcoholism, and even more so with arrogant and abrasive youngsters who substitute 'commitment' for insight.
conrad black— Black, Conrad et al, "A Brief to the Special Senate Committee on the Mass Media from the Sherbrooke Record...", 1969 : Despite Black's involvement in press ownership, he heaped scorn on journalism
I do not know why Journalists insist on calling their stuff "pieces", when they are in fact little entities, attempting to have beginnings, middles and endings.
james cameron— The Best of Cameron (Sevenoaks: New English Library, 1981) p. 49. ISBN 0450048810.
Whatever analogy we choose, one thing is clear - any group with influence needs people outside that group who will criticise it. In the real world of politics and society, Journalists do that - proper Journalists who know what having principles means, who aim for objectivity while accepting that it is unattainable, and who are open about who pays them and who they work with.
bill thompson— "Blog eats blog: The rise of the blogeoisie." by Bill Thompson, May 15, 2003.
The Journalists have constructed for themselves a little wooden chapel, which they also call the Temple of Fame, in which they put up and take down portraits all day long and make such a hammering you can't hear yourself speak.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg— D 20 (Notebook D (1773-1775))
Secretive power loathes Journalists who do their job: who push back screens, peer behind façades, lift rocks. Opprobrium from on high is their badge of honour.
john pilger— Pilger, John (2005). Tell Me No Lies: Investigative Journalism That Changed the World. Thunder's Mouth Press. p. xv. ISBN 1560257865.
Journalists saya thing that they know isn't true, in the hope that if they keep on saying it long enough it will be true.
(Enoch) Arnold Bennett— 1918 The Title, act 2.
Journalists who make mistakes get sued for libel; historians who make mistakes get to publish a revised edition.
bill moyers— "The Big Story", speech to the Texas State Historical Association (7 March 1997), as quoted in Moyers on Democracy (2008), p. 131
Journalists are too poorly paid in this country to know anything that is fit for publication.
George Bernard Shaw— Preface (Getting Married (1908))
Once you have an innovation culture, even those who are not scientists or engineers - poets, actors, Journalists - they, as communities, embrace the meaning of what it is to be scientifically literate... They don't fight science and they don't fight technology.
neil degrasse tyson— In an interview with 'Forbes' 2012
Journalists who make mistakes get sued for libel; historians who make mistakes get to publish a revised edition.
— Bill Moyers, "The Big Story", speech to the Texas State Historical Association, 7 March 1997, Moyers on Democracy (2008), p. 131.
Suffering from an evident complex of moral inferiority, a lot of Journalists are interested in teaching the Pope how to do the Pope. Suffering from an evident complex of moral superiority, a lot of priests are interested in teaching Journalists how to do journalism. But the worst of all are the journalist-priests.
leon bertoletti— Complexes, Hic Sunt Leones, 22/03/2009
I see Journalists as the manual workers, the laborers of the word. Journalism can only be literature when it is passionate.
marguerite duras— Walesa's Wife, from Practicalities (1987, trans. 1990)
Incoherence is a common hazard for Journalists who dabble in ethical judgments.
andrew ferguson— "Scotty: All the news that's fit to schmooze," The Weekly Standard (2003-02-24)
You should never fall in love with your own press clippings, because it is very much the nature of the beast that the same Journalists who build you up between Monday and Friday tear you down for weekend fun...My family's habit of living in the past seems to me pathological, even dangerous. If all greatness lies in the past, what is the point of the future?
stephen l. carter— Ch. 17, The Brass Ring, II
In Britain, Journalists often view comparisons with our society going back two, three, or seven centuries as more relevant than comparisons going back two, three, or seven decades. Drunkenness centuries ago is more illuminating than comparative sobriety 30 years ago. The distant past, selectively mined for evidence that justifies our current conduct, becomes more important than living memory.
anthony daniels— Selective Memory (July 6, 2004)
Hype is the awkward and desperate attempt to convince Journalists that what you've made is worth the misery of having to review it.
Federico Fellini— "Hype"
In just one year in Bosnia, thirty of my colleagues died. There is a little Somme waiting for all innocent Journalists.
robert fisk— Preface (page XXI)
I hate the world and almost all the people in it. I hate the Labour Congress and the Journalists who send men to be slaughtered, and the fathers who feel a smug pride when their sons are killed, and even the pacifists who keep saying human nature is essentially good, in spite of all the daily proofs to the contrary. I hate the planet and the human race – I am ashamed to belong to such a species.
bertrand russell— Letter to Colette, December 28, 1916.It is preoccupation with possession, more than anything else, that prevents men from living freely and nobly.
A hacker is someone who enjoys playful cleverness not necessarily with computers. The programmers in the old MIT free software community of the 60s and 70s referred to themselves as hackers. Around 1980, Journalists who discovered the hacker community mistakenly took the term to mean “security breaker.”
richard m. stallman— Richard Stallman, Words to Avoid (or Use with Care) Because They Are Loaded or Confusing
I know the British press is very attached to the lobby system. It lets the Journalists and the politicians feel proud of their traditional freedoms while giving the reader as much of the truth as they think is good for him.
tom stoppard— Mageeba, Act II
My experience is that Journalists report on the nearest-cliche algorithm, which is extremely uninformative because there aren’t many cliches, the truth is often quite distant from any cliche, and the only thing you can infer about the actual event was that this was the closest cliche.... It is simply not possible to appreciate the sheer awfulness of mainstream media reporting until someone has actually reported on you. It is so much worse than you think.
eliezer yudkowsky— Predictible Fakers (January 2009)
Maxim Gorki, supposedly citing a quote from Trotsky, told some Journalists in 1924: "From Mussolini's governmental actions I have got to know his energy and I admire him, but I prefer Trotsky's opinion: Mussolini has made a revolution, he is our best student."
— Falasca-Zamponi, Simonetta (1997). Fascist Spectacle: The Aesthetics of Power in Mussolini's Italy. Berkeley: University of California Press, c1997p. 52
In emerging democracies like Russia, in authoritarian states like Iran, Yugoslavia, Journalists play a critical role in civil society, they form the very basis of those new democracies and civil societies.
— Christiane Amanpour, in the Keynote address at the Edward R. Murrow Awards Ceremony in Minneapolis, Minnesota (13 September 2000)
One question that remains is at what point an individual Net poster has the right to assume prerogatives that have traditionally been only the province of Journalists and news-gathering organizations. When the Pentagon Papers landed on the doorstep of the New York Times , the newspaper was able to publish under the First Amendment's guarantees of freedom of speech, and to make a strong argument in court that publication was in the public interest. ... the amplification inherent in the combination of the Net's high-speed communications and the size of the available population has greatly changed the balance of power.
— Wendy M. Grossman (1997). Net.wars. New York University Press. p. 90. ISBN 0814731031.
The duty of Journalists is to tell the truth. Journalism means you go back to the actual facts, you look at the documents, you discover what the record is, and you report it that way.
— Noam Chomsky interview in Wang, Joy (December 2004). "Lecture: Noam Chomsky". Bullpen: NYU Journalism (New York University). Retrieved on 2009-02-20.
I suppose, in the end, we Journalists try - or should try - to be the first impartial witnesses of history. If we have any reason for our existence, the least must be our ability to report history as it happens so that no one can say: 'We didn't know - no one told us.'
— Fisk, Robert (2005). The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East. Fourth Estate. p. xxv. ISBN 0007203837.
The national religion in the United States is worship of all things military. And Journalists are its high priests.
— Glenn Greenwald (1967), interview with Democracy Now! (November 14, 2012). Glenn Greenwald: While Petraeus Had Affair with Biographer, Corporate Media Had Affair with Petraeus. Retrieved on 2012-11-15.
