So much for Objective Journalism. Don't bother to look for it here—not under any byline of mine; or anyone else I can think of. With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms.
Why bother with newspapers, if this is all they offer? Agnew was right. The press is a gang of cruel faggots. Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits— a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage.
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
I mean to work for 60 Minutes, and be able to go any place in the world, do any story, have enough time on the air, et cetera, there is simply no job in journalism like it. At the beginning, it was a dream. Even now, at the age of 84, I work with people who are half my age or less, and it is the draw of the story. If there is a good story going, why not be there?
News is what a chap who doesn't care much about anything wants to read. And it's only news until he's read it. After that it's dead.
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.
In the old days men had the rack. Now they have the Press. That is an Improvement certainly. but still it is very bad, and wrong, and demoralising. Somebody - was it Burke? - called journalism the fourth estate. That was true at the time, no doubt. But at the present moment it really is the only estate. It has eaten up the other three. The Lords Temporal say nothing, The Lords Spiritual have nothing to say and the House of Commons has nothing to say and says it. We are dominated by journalism.
The fact is, that the public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesmanlike habits, supplies their demands
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.
Ernest: But what is the difference between Literature and Journalism? Gilbert: Journalism is unreadable and Literature is not read. That is all.
You cannot hope no occasion to.
If somebody came from Mars to America and went around for months or years, and then you asked them who has the best jobs, they would say the journalists, because the journalists get to make momentary entries into people's lives when they are interesting, and get out when they cease to be interesting.
I hate journalists. There is nothing in them but tittering jeering emptiness... The shallowest people on the ridge of the earth.
A Statesman is an easy man, He tells his lies by rote; A Journalist makes up his lies. And takes you by the throat
I would * * * earnestly advise them for their good to order this paper to be punctually served up, and to be looked upon as a part of the tea equipage.
They consume a considerable quantity of our paper manufacture, employ our artisans in printing, and find business for great numbers of indigent persons.
Advertisements are of great use to the vulgar. First of all, as they are instruments of ambition. A man that is by no means big enough for the Gazette, may easily creep into the advertisements; by which means we often see an apothecary in the same paper of news with a plenipotentiary, or a running footman with an ambassador.
The great art in writing advertisements is the finding out a proper method to catch the reader's eye; without which a good thing may pass over unobserved, or be lost among commissions of bankrupt.
Ask how to live? Write, write, write, anything;The world's a fine believing world, write news.
[The opposition Press] which is in the hands of malecontents who have failed in their career.
Hear, land o' cakes, and brither Scots,* And, faith, he'll prent it.
The editor sat in his sanctum, his countenance furrowed with care,His eyes on his dusty old table, with different documents spread.
Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporter's gallery yonder, there sat a fourth estate more important far than they all.
A parliament speaking through reporters to Buncombe and the Twenty-seven millions, mostly fools.
Get your facts first, and then you can distort 'em as much as you please.
Only a newspaper! Quick read, quick lost,Star-eyed intelligence?
To serve thy generation, this thy fate:A work too great for fame.
I believe it has been said that one copy of the Times contains more useful information than the whole of the historical works of Thucydides.
Did Charity prevail, the press would proveA vehicle of virtue, truth, and love.
How shall I speak thee, or thy power address,Knowledge of good and evil is from thee.
He comes, the herald of a noisy world,News from all nations lumbering at his back.
When found, make a note of.
Miscellanists are the most popular writers among every people; for it is they who form a communication between the learned and the unlearned, and, as it were, throw a bridge between those two great divisions of the public.
None of our political writers … take notice of any more than three estates, namely, Kings, Lords and Commons … passing by in silence that very large and powerful body which form the fourth estate in the community … the Mob.
Caused by a dearth of scandal should the vaporsDistress our fair ones—let them read the papers.
The liberty of the press is the palladium of all the civil, political, and religious rights of an Englishman.
The highest reach of a news-writer is an empty Reasoning on Policy, and vain Conjectures on the public Management.
The News-writer lies down at Night in great Tranquillity, upon a piece of News which corrupts before Morning, and which he is obliged to throw away as soon as he awakes.
Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever lays one down without a feeling of disappointment.
Behold the whole huge earth sent to me hebdomadally in a brown paper wrapper.
I fear three newspapers more than a hundred thousand bayonets.
The penny-papers of New York do more to govern this country than the White House at Washington.
We live under a government of men and morning newspapers.
The press is like the air, a chartered libertine.
The mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease.
Can it be maintained that a person of any education can learn anything worth knowing from a penny paper? It may be said that people may learn what is said in Parliament. Well, will that contribute to their education?
The newspapers! Sir, they are the most villanous—licentious—abominable—infernal—not that I ever read them—no—I make it a rule never to look into a newspaper.
Trade hardly deems the busy day begunThe fate of fighting cocks, or fighting kings.
Here shall the Press the People's right maintain,Pledged to Religion, Liberty, and Law.
The thorn in the cushion of the editorial chair.
The liberty of the press is essential to the security of freedom in a state: it ought not, therefore, to be restrained in this commonwealth.
You go all over America and you see small papers that do really good jobs in their communities of reporting. The modern New York Times, the modern Washington Post, the modern Wall Street Journal are better papers than they were at the time of Watergate in most respects. But if you look at the rest of the field, … real news based on the best obtainable version of the truth was becoming less and less a commodity, less and less a real part of our journalistic institutions.
Never forget that if you don't hit a newspaper reader between the eyes with your first sentence, there is no need of writing a second one.
Journalism may not dare too much. It can be gently humorous and ironic, very lightly touched by idiosyncrasy, but it must not repel readers by digging too deeply. This is especially true of its approach to language: the conventions are not questioned.
A would-be satirist, a hired buffoon,And furbish falsehoods for a magazine.
A Fourth Estate, of Able Editors, springs up.
Great is journalism. Is not every able editor a ruler of the world, being the persuader of it?
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. It is not a figure of speech, or a witty saying; it is a literal fact, - very momentous to us in these times.
Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers another.
I know that journalism largely consists in saying 'Lord Jones Dead' to people who never knew Lord Jones was alive.
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.
I don't really understand why journalism has to be so nasty, so sarcastic and intrusive.
Th' newspaper does ivrything f'r us. It runs th' polis foorce an' th' banks, commands th' milishy, controls th' ligislachure, baptizes th' young, marries th' foolish, comforts th' afflicted, afflicts th' comfortable, buries th' dead an' roasts thim aftherward. They ain't annything it don't turn its hand to fr'm explainin' th' docthrine iv thransubstantiation to composin' saleratus biskit.
Journalism is organised gossip
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.'
Today's serious nonfiction writer is important to society because from a solid background of social sciences, combined with the journalistic skills of a reporter, one moves beyond the reporter function to the front edge of our emerging society.
When journalese was at its rifest the Ministry of Health was established - possibly a coincidence.
Journalism is not a profession ... at its heart, it's just a craft. And that means that it can be practiced by anyone who is sensible and intelligent and thoughtful and curious ...
Grassroots journalism is part of the wider phenomenon of citizen-generated media - of a global conversation that is growing in strength, complexity, and power. When people can express themselves, they will. When they can do so with powerful yet inexpensive tools, they take to the new-media realm quickly. When they can reach a potentially global audience, they literally can change the world.
The national religion in the United States is worship of all things military. And journalists are its high priests.
Editor: a person employed by a newspaper, whose business it is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed.
One's right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.
The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them.
They lied about it! The enemy boils the ocean, cooks the sixth fleet and every man, woman and child within fifty miles of a shoreline - you could expect some coverage. What did they report? Minor soil erosion in the Florida Keys. They boiled the ocean, woman!
What people outside do not appreciate is that a newspaper is like a soufflé, prepared in a hurry for immediate consumption. This of course is why whenever you read a newspaper account of some event of which you have personal knowledge it is nearly always inadequate or inaccurate. Journalists are as aware as anyone of this defect; it is simply that if the information is to reach as many readers as possible, something less than perfection has often to be accepted.
This cadre of know-nothings, haters, anti-white racists, fake news propagandists, and hounders of conservatives have tried to make life hell for people like me for years, simply for having differing opinions. They’ve also done it with smirks on their eminently punchable faces that made that Covington school kid look like he’d swallowed a wasp.
They were professional tantrum artists who only knew one thing: how to bludgeon the West to death with identity politics. And now, with the most arousing irony I have been witness to in years, we can safely say, “#TimesUp”.
My problem, and our problem — I think this is a view that's pretty widely shared in the news business — is, you know, we, and I don't just mean The Times, are too ready to publish the blandest of quotes, or, sometimes, the idlest of gossip and innuendo, behind a cover of anonymity. I think it cheapens the currency of source protection.
Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever lays one down without a feeling of disappointment.
In our society, the journalist ranks with the philantropist as a person who has something extremely valuable to dispense (his currency is the strangely intoxicating substance called publicity), and who is consequently treated with a deference quite out of proportion to his merits as a person. There are very few people in this country who do not regard with rapture the prospect of being written about or interviewed on a radio or television program.
The newspapers were beginning to get on to Jaycie now. They had ignored her at first. Put things down to anyone and everything else. After all, it was a bit awkward for them having to do with a woman who was beautiful but apparently had no sex life; they didn’t know what to try and smear her with.
Journalists who make mistakes get sued for libel; historians who make mistakes get to publish a revised edition.
The fat Russian agent was cornering all the foreign refugees in turn and explaining plausibly that this whole affair was an Anarchist plot. I watched him with some interest, for it was the first time that I had seen a person whose profession was telling lies—unless one counts journalists.
In a world where everyone is a publisher, no one is an editor and that is the danger we face today.
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.
What a monstrous thing that a University should teach journalism! I thought that was only done at Oxford. This respect for the filthy multitude is ruining civilisation.
But I'll report itWhere senators shall mingle tears with smiles.
Report me and my cause arightTo the unsatisfied.
Bring me no more reports.
I still believe that if your aim is to change the world, journalism is a more immediate short-term weapon.
I don't want to be part of the story. I want to be an anonymous, quiet onlooker who tries to work out what the hell is happening - its not easy - and then tells other people about it. I don't like being a figure in the thing.
The Press is at once the eye and the ear and the tongue of the people. It is the visible speech, if not the voice, of the democracy. It is the phonograph of the world.
Journalism (definition): The art, or science, of representing life as a series of clichés.
To be completely cured of newspapers, spend a year reading the previous week’s newspapers.
I've always had standards about writing well. There is art in this business. There is potentially great art.
The art of a news reporter is to learn how to lull a victim, because all good reporters are confidence tricksters in embryo.