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Journalism largely consists in
saying "Lord Jones is dead" to people who never knew Lord Jones was
alive. G.K. Chesterton
We can't quite decide if the world is growing worse, or if the
reporters are just working harder. The Houghton Line, November
1965
News is history shot on the wing. Gene Fowler, Skyline
It was while making newspaper deliveries, trying to miss the bushes
and hit the porch, that I first learned the importance of accuracy
in journalism. Charles Osgood
Newspapers: dead trees with information smeared on them. Horizon,
"Electronic Frontier"
I always turn to the sports section first. The sports section
records people's accomplishments; the front page nothing but man's
failures. Earl Warren, quoted in Sports Illustrated, 22 July 1968
If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac
River, the headline that afternoon would read: "President Can't
Swim." Lyndon B. Johnson
Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading
newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second
hand of a clock. Ben Hecht
The flood of print has turned reading into a process of gulping
rather than savoring. Warren Chappell
They kill good trees to put out bad newspapers. James G. Watt,
quoted in Newsweek, 8 March 1982
Journalists aren't supposed to praise things. It's a violation of
work rules almost as serious as buying drinks with our own money or
absolving the CIA of something. P.J. O'Rourke
The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who
reads nothing but newspapers. Thomas Jefferson
In the spider-web of facts, many a truth is strangled. Paul
Eldridge
If you saw a man drowning and you could either save him or
photograph the event... what kind of film would you use? Author
Unknown
There ain't any news in being good. You might write the doings of
all the convents of the world on the back of a postage stamp, and
have room to spare. Finley Peter Dunne
Journalism is the ability to meet the challenge of filling space.
Rebecca West
I am unable to understand how a man of honor could take a newspaper
in his hands without a shudder of disgust. Charles Baudelaire
A newspaper consists of just the same number of words, whether there
be any news in it or not. Henry Fielding
Journalism is literature in a hurry. Matthew Arnold
Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the
Reporters' gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important
far than they all. Thomas Carlyle, Heroes and Hero-Worship
No news is good news. No journalists is even better. Nicolas
Bentley
Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a
newspaper. Thomas Jefferson, letter to Nathaniel Macon
The one function that TV news performs very well is that when there
is no news we give it to you with the same emphasis as if there
were. David Brinkley
Harmony seldom makes a headline. Silas Bent
A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself. Arthur
Miller
We live under a government of men and morning newspapers. Wendell
Phillips
The evening papers print what they do and get away with it because
by afternoon the human mind is ruined anyhow. Christopher Morley,
Kitty Foyle
Once a newspaper touches a story, the facts are lost forever, even
to the protagonists. Norman Mailer
Journalists cover words and delude themselves into thinking they
have committed journalism. Hedrick Smith
Newspapers are unable, seemingly, to discriminate between a bicycle
accident and the collapse of civilisation. George Bernard Shaw,
1931
You can crush a man with journalism. William Randolph Hearst
With all the mass media concentrated in a few hands, the ancient
faith in the competition of ideas in the free market seems like a
hollow echo of a much simpler day. Kingman Brewster, Jr.
Editor: A person employed on a newspaper whose business it is to
separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is
printed. Elbert Hubbard
In the real world, the right thing never happens in the right place
and the right time. It is the job of journalists and historians to
make it appear that it has. Mark Twain
I fear three newspapers more than a hundred thousand bayonets.
Napoleon
Get your facts first, and then you can distort 'em as much as you
please. Mark Twain
People everywhere confuse
What they read in newspapers with news.
A.J. Liebling, The New Yorker, 7 April 1956
I've always said there's a place for the press but they haven't dug
it yet. Tommy Docherty, 1980
Every newspaper editor owes tribute to the devil. Jean de la
Fontaine
If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the
people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing
the oppressing. Malcolm X
All newspaper writers have heard that the stuff they compose today
has an excellent chance of being used to wrap tomorrow's mackerel.
Ira Berkow
When a dog bites a man that is not news, but when a man bites a dog
that is news. Charles Anderson Dana
The secret of successful journalism is to make your readers so angry
they will write half your paper for you. C.E.M. Joad
Journalism is organized gossip. Edward Egglestone
A newspaper, as I'm sure you know, is a collection of supposedly
true stories written down by writers who either saw them happen or
talked to people who did. These writers are called journalists, and
like telephone operators, butchers, ballerinas, and people who clean
up after horses, journalists can sometimes make mistakes. Lemony
Snicket
Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice;
journalism what will be grasped at once. Cyril Connolly
The faculty of attention has utterly vanished from the Anglo-Saxon
mind, extinguished at its source by the big bayadθre of journalism,
of the newspaper and the picture magazine which keeps screaming,
"Look at me." Illustrations, loud simplifications... bill poster
advertising - only these stand a chance. Henry James
Television has a real problem. They have no page two. Consequently
every big story gets the same play and comes across to the viewer as
a really big, scary one. Art Buchwald, 1969
If you don't read the newspaper, you are uninformed. If you do read
the newspaper, you are misinformed. Author unknown, commonly
attributed to Mark Twain or Thomas Jefferson
I do not mean to be the slightest bit critical of TV newspeople, who
do a superb job, considering that they operate under severe time
constraints and have the intellectual depth of hamsters. But TV news
can only present the "bare bones" of a story; it takes a newspaper,
with its capability to present vast amounts of information, to
render the story truly boring. Dave Barry
The bigger the information media, the less courage and freedom they
allow. Bigness means weakness. Eric Sevareid, "The Press and the
People," television program, 1959
Journalism - a profession whose business it is to explain to others
what it personally does not understand. Lord Northcliffe
The American mass media have achieved what American political might
could not: World domination. Akbar S. Ahmed
All of us learn to write by the second grade, then most of us go on
to other things. Bobby Knight, on reporters
That ephemeral sheet,... the newspaper, is the natural enemy of the
book, as the whore is of the decent woman. E. and J. de Goncourt,
Journal, July 1858
You should always believe all you read in the newspapers, as this
makes them more interesting. Rose Maccaulay
Everything you read in newspapers is absolutely true, except for
that rare story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge.
Erwin Knoll
Being a reporter is as much a diagnosis as a job description. Anna
Quindlen
The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything. Except
what is worth knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and having
tradesman-like habits, supplies their demands. Oscar Wilde, The
Soul of Man Under Socialism, 1891
If I had my choice I would kill every reporter in the world, but I
am sure we would be getting reports from Hell before breakfast.
William Tecumseh Sherman
Journalists do not live by words alone, although sometimes they have
to eat them. Adlai E. Stevenson
Freedom of the press in Britain is freedom to print such of the
proprietor's prejudices as the advertiser's won't object to. Helen
Swaffer
I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and
photographers. Gandhi
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Quotations about Media and Journalism