Journalism Quotes

• Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.

  George Orwell

  Doe, Want, Publicity

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  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

  Hate, Lying, Media

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• You can't serve the public good without the truth as a bottom line.

  Carl Bernstein

  Truth, Honesty, Lines

  "Watergate Journalist Says Media Losing Public’s Trust". www2.ljworld.com. April 16, 2005.

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• Good journalism should challenge people, not just mindlessly amuse them.

  Carl Bernstein

  People, Challenges, Should

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• There can be no higher law in journalism than to tell the truth and to shame the devil.

  Walter Lippmann

  Law, Devil, Telling The Truth

  Walter Lippmann (1995). “Liberty and the News”, p.15, Transaction Publishers

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• If the newspapers of a country are filled with good news, the jails of that country will be filled with good people.

  Daniel Patrick Moynihan

  Country, Jail, People

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• Journalism can never be silent: that is its greatest virtue and its greatest fault. It must speak, and speak immediately, while the echoes of wonder, the claims of triumph and the signs of horror are still in the air.

  Henry Anatole Grunwald

  Echoes, Air, Faults

  "WikiLeaks and the Myth of Journalistic Objectivity" by James Moore, www.huffingtonpost.com. December 3, 2010.

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• Journalism without a moral position is impossible. Every journalist is a moralist. It's absolutely unavoidable.

  Marguerite Duras

  Moral, Impossible, Journalist

  Marguerite Duras (1997). “Outside”, Beacon Press (MA)

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• 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.

  Hunter S. Thompson

  Epic, Race, Modern Journalism

  "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72". Book by Hunter S. Thompson, 1973.

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• Speaking generally, people who are drawn to journalism are interested in what happens from the ground up less than they are from the top down.

  Tom Brokaw

  Top Down, People, Happens

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• If a person is not talented enough to be a novelist, not smart enough to be a lawyer, and his hands are too shaky to perform operations, he becomes a journalist.

  Norman Mailer

  Smart, Hands, Novelists

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  The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Business, Book, Reading

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• Freedom of press is limited to those who own one.

  H. L. Mencken

  Funny, Freedom, Political

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• It sometimes takes a while for executives to figure out that the reporters they think of as little bugs to be squashed or spun can be more powerful than they are.

  Jonathan Alter

  Powerful, Thinking, Littles

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• A news sense is really a sense of what is important, what is vital, what has color and life - what people are interested in. That's journalism.

  Burton Rascoe

  Color, People, Important

  "Useful Quotations : A Cyclopedia of Quotations" edited by Tryon Edwards, C. N. Catrevas, and Jonathan Edwards, 1933.

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• In journalism, there has always been a tension between getting it first and getting it right.

  Ellen Goodman

  Firsts, Tension, Goodman

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

  Oscar Wilde

  Writing, Media, Differences

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• The lowest form of popular culture - lack of information, misinformation, disinformation, and a contempt for the truth or the reality of most people's lives - has overrun real journalism.

  Carl Bernstein

  Real, People, Ordinary

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• I don't so much mind that newspapers are dying - it's watching them commit suicide that pisses me off.

  Molly Ivins

  Funny, Suicide, Mind

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• Journalism allows its readers to witness history; fiction gives its readers an opportunity to live it.

  John Hersey

  Writing, Opportunity, Giving

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• Journalism is organized gossip.

  Edward Eggleston

  Funny, Gossip, Organized

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• Dealing with the media is more difficult that bathing a leper

  Mother Teresa

  Media, Difficult, Bathing

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• I see journalists as the manual workers, the laborers of the word. Journalism can only be literature when it is passionate.

  Marguerite Duras

  Passionate, Literature, Journalist

  "Practicalities (Walesa's Wife)". Book by Marguerite Duras, 1990.

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• 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

  Funny, Buying, Serious

  P. J. O'Rourke (2007). “Give War a Chance: Eyewitness Accounts of Mankind's Struggle Against Tyranny, Injustice, and Alcohol-Free Beer”, p.41, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• 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

  Jobs, Rocks, Peers

  John Pilger (2011). “Tell Me No Lies: Investigative Journalism and its Triumphs”, p.15, Random House

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