#Journalism Quotes

“The Times is speechless, and takes three columns to express its speechlessness.”

“Yeah? For what paper?”

“I hope we never live to see the day when a thing is as bad as some of our newspapers make it.”

“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.”

“To your request of my opinion of the manner in which a newspaper should be conducted, so as to be most useful, I should answer, "by restraining it to true facts & sound principles only." Yet I fear such a paper would find few subscribers. It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more completely deprive the nation of it's benefits, than is done by it's abandoned prostitution to falsehood.”

“Why one Ad is worth more to a paper than 40 Editorials.”

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

“The smarter the journalists are, the better off society is. For to a degree, people read the press to inform themselves - and the better the teacher, the better the student body.”

“The smarter the journalists are, the better off society is.”

“Take me ham away, take away my eggs, even my Chili, but leave me my newspaper.”

“Any person that don't read at least one well-written country newspaper is not truly informed.”

“But the fact being once established, that the press is impotent when it abandons itself to falsehood, I leave to others to restore it to its strength, by recalling it within the pale of truth. Within that, it is a noble institution, equally the friend of science and of civil liberty.”

“There is no substitute for a local newspaper that is doing its job.”

“A certain columnist has been banned from all Shubert openings. Now he can wait three days and go to their closings.”

“Here lies Walter Winchell in the dirt he loved so well.”

“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.”

“From forty years' experience of the wretched guess-work of the newspapers of what is not done in open daylight, and of their falsehood even as to that, I rarely think them worth reading, and almost never worth notice.”

“Media bias in editorials and columns is one thing. Media fraud in reporting 'facts' in news stories is something else. ...The issue is not what various journalists or news organizations' editorial views are. The issue is the transformation of news reporting into ideological spin, along with self-serving taboos and outright fraud.”

“I am being ripped off, because I've never lied to the press. Just as much truth I bring to my work, a journalist should bring that much truth to their work.”

“Men with the muckrake are often indispensable to the well-being of society, but only if they know when to stop raking the muck, and to look upward to the celestial crown above them.... If they gradually grow to feel that the whole world is nothing but muck their power of usefulness is gone.”

“Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day.”

“Men with the muckrake are often indispensable to the well-being of society, but only if they know when to stop raking the muck.”

“It was a fatal day when the public discovered that the pen is mightier than the paving-stone, and can be made as offensive as the brickbat. They at once sought for the journalist, found him, developed him, and made him their industrious and well-paid servant. It is greatly to be regretted, for both their sakes.”

“Now, it is very necessary that we should not flinch from seeing what is vile and debasing. There is filth on the floor, and it must be scraped up with the muck rake; and there are times and places where this service is the most needed of all the services that can be performed. But the man who never does anything else, who never thinks or speaks or writes, save of his feats with the muck rake, speedily becomes, not a help but one of the most potent forces for evil.”

“There should be relentless exposure of and attack upon every evil practice, whether in politics, in business, or in social life. I hail as a benefactor every writer or speaker, every man who, on the platform, or in book, magazine or newspaper, with merciless severity makes such attack, provided always that he in his turn remembers that the attack is of use only if it is absolutely truthful.”

“It is chiefly, I regret to say, through journalism that such people find expression. I regret it because there is much to be said in favour of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.”

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

“I think we need editorial oversight now more than ever. Anything we can do to help newspapers find new ways of expression that will help them get paid, I am all for.”

“There is much to be said in favor of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community. By carefully chronicling the current events of contemporary life, it shows us of what very little importance such events really are. By invariably discussing the unnecessary, it makes us understand what things are requisite for culture, and what are not.”

“Being a famous print journalist is like being the best-dressed woman on radio.”

“There are only two forces that can carry light to all the corners of the globe... the sun in the heavens and the Associated Press down here.”

“One of the objects of a newspaper is to understand popular feeling and to give expression to it; another is to arouse among the people certain desirable sentiments; and the third is fearlessly to expose popular defects.”

“By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.”

“The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.”

“I think the Cincinnati Enquirer must be edited by children.”

“There should be a law that no ordinary newspaper should be allowed to write about art. The harm they do by their foolish and random writing it would be impossible to overestimate--not to the artist but to the public.... Without them we would judge a man simply by his work; but at present the newspapers are trying hard to induce the public to judge a sculptor, for instance, never by his statues but by the way he treats his wife; a painter by the amount of his income and a poet by the colour of his necktie.”

“There should be a law that no ordinary newspaper should be allowed to write about art. The harm they do by their foolish and random writing it would be impossible to overestimate - not to the artist, but to the public, blinding them to all but harming the artist not at all.”

“A private should preserve a respectful attitude toward his superiors, and should seldom or never proceed so far as to offer suggestions to his general in the field. If the battle is not being conducted to suit him, it is better for him to resign. By the etiquette of war, it is permitted to none below the rank of newspaper correspondent to dictate to the general in the field.”

“As for modern journalism, it is not my business to defend it. It justifies its own existence by the great Darwinian principle of the survival of the vulgarest.”

“A journalist is a reporter out of a job.”

“Bad manners make a journalist.”

“In the real world, nothing happens at the right place at the right time. It is the job of journalists and historians to correct that.”

“Journalism should never be prostituted for selfish ends or for the sake of merely earning a livelihood or, worse still, for amassing money.”

“A newspaper is not just for reporting the news as it is, but to make people mad enough to do something about it.”

“Journalism has a distinct place in familiarizing and expressing public opinion.”

“The sole aim of journalism should be service.”

“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.”

“That is a society editor, sitting there elegantly dressed, with his legs crossed in that indolent way, observing the clothes the ladies wear, so that he can describe them for his paper and make them out finer than they are and get bribes for it and become wealthy.”

“So I became a newspaperman. I hated to do it but I couldnt find honest employment.”

“Facts we would always place before our readers, whether they are palatable or not, and it is by placing them constantly before the public in their nakedness that the misunderstanding between the two communities in South Africa can be removed.”