Media Quotes

You try to tell me anything about the newspaper business! Sir, I have been through it from Alpha to Omaha, and I tell you that the less a man knows the bigger the noise he makes and the higher the salary he commands.

Israeli murderers are called "commandos," Arab commandos are called "terrorists."

At certain times each year, we journalists do almost nothing except apply for the Pulitzers and several dozen other major prizes. During these times you could walk right into most newsrooms and commit a multiple axe murder naked, and it wouldn't get reported in the paper because the reporters and editors would all be too busy filling out prize applications.

How are children supposed to learn to act like adults, when so much of what they see on television shows adults acting like children?

The newspapers are the ruling power. Any other government is reduced to a few marines at Fort Independence. If a man neglects to read the Daily Times, government will go down on its knees to him, for this is the only treason these days.

Is the English press honest or dishonest? At normal times it is deeply dishonest. All the papers that matter live off their advertisements, and the advertisers exercise an indirect censorship over news. Yet I do not suppose there is one paper in England that can be straightforwardly bribed with hard cash. In the France of the Third Republic all but a very few of the newspapers could notoriously be bought over the counter like so many pounds of cheese.

There are few talents so richly rewarded - especially in politics and the media - as the ability to portray parasites as victims, and portray demands for preferential treatment as struggles for equal rights.

Saving Private Ryan was probably the illest, sickest movie I've ever watched, and I didn't see anybody criticizing that one for violence.

We were really professional by the time we got to the States; we had learned the whole game. When we arrived here we knew how to handle the press; the British press were the toughest in the world and we could handle anything. We were all right.

Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors.

Journalists are too poorly paid in this country to know anything that is fit for publication.

I was in a conversation and someone said: "You know, we were talking about the whole issue of transgender and how it has become so accepted now, and somebody said, 'You know the Oprah show, I think has had a big impact.'" I said, I don't think so. We did several transgender [shows], but we didn't do as much for transgender as I did for, say, abused kids or battered women. And they said, "But no, you started the conversation. You started the conversation and the conversation has led us to here."

The white press itself created civil right leaders.

I am guided by the vision of what I believe this show can be. Originally our goal was to uplift, enlighten, encourage and entertain through the medium of television. Now, our mission statement for The Oprah Winfrey Show is to use television to transform people's lives, to make viewers see themselves differently and to bring happiness and a sense of fulfillment into every home.

The President proclaims war, and those Senators who dissent are not those who know better, but those who can afford to...Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors.

I think I'm able to reach a lot of folks, despite the fact that the conventional news media sometimes says, "You know, this speech is too long," or "It's too complicated," or "He needs to have better sound bites," or what have you.

I'm sick of the tabloids' saying I obsess over guys. Why would you obsess over guys? They don't like it.

The news we hear, for the most part, is not news to our genius. It is the stalest repetition.

Michael Moore and I actually have a lot in common. We both appreciate living in a country where there's free expression. But Michael, if you ever show up at my front door with a camera, I'll kill you. I mean it.

It is not only poverty that torments the Negro; it is the fact of poverty amid plenty. It is a misery generated by the gulf between the affluence he sees in the mass media and the deprivation he experiences in his everyday life.

Television is where you watch people in your living room that you would not want near your house.

The first thing we did was to proclaim our Liverpoolness to the world, and say 'It's all right to come from Liverpool and talk like this'. Before, anybody from Liverpool who made it, like Ted Ray, Tommy Handley, Arthur Askey, had to lose their accent to get on the BBC.

Could slavery suggest a more complete servility than some of these journals exhibit? Is there any dust which their conduct does not lick, and make fouler still with its slime?

Our citizens may be deceived for awhile, and have been deceived; but as long as the presses can be protected, we may trust to them for light.

The press is like a woman: sublime when it lies, it will not let go until it has forced you to believe it. The public, like a foolish husband, always succumbs.

I would not know how I am supposed to feel about many stories if not for the fact that the TV news personalities make sad faces for sad stories and happy faces for happy stories.

Newspapers have become more important to the average man than the scriptures.

A man who has lived in many places is not likely to be deceived by the local errors of his native village; the scholar has lived in many times and is therefore in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and the microphone of his own age.

In America the President reigns for four years, and Journalism governs forever and ever.

And I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper. If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter, - we need never read of another. One is enough. If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications?

Here in the news media, our focus is on speed. When we get hold of some new and possibly inaccurate information, our highest priority is to get it to you, the public, before our competitors do. If the news media owned airlines, there would be a lot less concern about how many planes crashed, and a lot more concern about whose plane hit the ground first.

What has been doing in the last week, attacking Hollywood actresses [Meryl Streep] for criticizing him, I mean what would is this guy [Donald Trump] living in?

The journalists think that they cannot say too much in favor of such "improvements" in husbandry; it is a safe theme, like piety;but as for the beauty of one of these "model farms," I would as lief see a patent churn and a man turning it. They are, commonly, places merely where somebody is making money, it may be counterfeiting.

XM radio doesn't have commercials, so after about thirty minutes of listening to it, I'm like, "What should I buy?"

A statesman is an easy man, he tells his lies by rote.A journalist invents his lies, and rams them down your throat.So stay at home and drink your beer and let the neighbors vote.

I know the American people. I've met a lot of them. I've met a lot more of them than any columnist has, or any talking head on TV has. And they're pretty sophisticated.

We don't give our criminals much punishment, but we sure give 'em plenty of publicity.

The editor of a newspaper cannot be independent, but must work with one hand tied behind him by party and patrons, and be content to utter only half or two-thirds of his mind . writers of all kinds are manacled servants of the public. We write frankly and fearlessly, but then we "modify" before we print.

The New York papers have long known that no large question is ever really settled until I have been consulted.

Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America from border to border and coast to coast and all the ships at sea. Let's go to press.

Early in life I had noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper.

A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.

If there were camera phones back in the day, the biggest athletes in the world would have had a lot of explaining to do.

Our blessed radio. It gives us eyes and ears out into the world. We listen to the German station only for good music. And we listen to the BBC for hope.

Most x-rated films are advertised as "adult entertaintment,"for "mature adults," when in reality they are juvenile entertainment for immature and insecure people.

It is the folly of too many to mistake the echo of a London coffee-house for the voice of the kingdom.

We are given in our newspapers and on TV and radio exactly what we, the public, insist on having, and this very frequently is mediocre information and mediocre entertainment.

My personal experience has been that in my 25 years of writing, I have not been asked to do more than four or five commercial one-shot scripts. These were performed on major national hook-ups but produced for me no immediate additional jobs or requests. One script for BBC was done around the world with an all-star cast.

To the haranguers of the populace among the ancients, succeed among the moderns your writers of political pamphlets and news-papers, and your coffee-house talkers.

Those who don’t read the newspapers are better off than those who do insofar as those who know nothing are better off than those whose heads are filled with half-truths and lies.

By...our readiness to allow arms to be purchased at will and fired at whim; by allowing our movie and television screens to teach our children that the hero is one who masters the art of shooting and the technique of killing...we have created an atmosphere in which violence and hatred have become popular pastimes.

Cable is not bound because people pay for it. It's literally a choice, that's the operative word. If you don't like the language, if cocksucker offends you, then turn it off.

A newspaper that reduces its coverage of the news important to its community is certain to reduce its readership as well

I was very pleased to get a Supreme Court justice suggesting a column, so I went and did a column about Beano. I went with my wife and another guy to a Mexican restaurant, which we thought would be the ultimate test for an antiflatulance product. There's a reason most of Mexico is located out of doors. And it worked. Several newspapers refused to run that column. But they did run advertisements for Beano.

You don't have to turn on the TV set. You don't have to work on the Internet. It's up to you.

To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.

Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.

And everyday I read the paper, there's another lie. They show my picture for the crimes of another guy.

Things are both getting better and getting worse. The madness is accelerating but an acceleration of the new consciousness is also coming in. However, this latter development is less apparent when you listen to the media. The media still mostly reflects what is happening in the sphere of the old consciousness.

The road to ignorance is paved with good editors.