Working as a journalist is exactly like being a wallflower at an orgy.
There is no reason to confuse television news with journalism.
The more abhorrent a news item the more comforting it was to be the recipient, since the fact that it had happened elsewhere proved that it had not happened here, was not happening here, and would therefore never happen here.
I often plagiarize from myself. I like to think of this as ecological journalism: I recycle.
In Czechoslovakia there is no such thing as freedom of the press. In the United States there is no such thing as freedom from the press.
The Press nowadays is not a literary press; classic diction and brilliancy of style do not distinguish it by any means.
We do not precisely enjoy liberty at the Figaro. M. de Latouche, our worthy director (ah! you should know the fellow), is always hanging over us, cutting, pruning, right or wrong, imposing upon us his whims, his aberrations, his fancies, and we have to write as he bids.
[On journalists:] We are a noisy, imperfect lot, struggling to scribble what has been called the first draft of history.
the whole point of muck-raking, apart from all the jokes, is to try to do something about what you've been writing about. You may not be able to change the world but at least you can embarrass the guilty.
The fact of being reported increases the apparent extent of a deplorable development by a factor of ten.
Being a journalist seemed the ideal way of both having a job and experiencing the world, especially for anyone with a sense of adventure.
[On journalists:] They are the scavengers of society who, possessing no guts of their own, tear out the guts of celebrities. They have the sycophantic, false enthusing gush of maiden aunts: who are accustomed to being trampled on doormats.
[On journalists:] They are as disruptive a menace to the public body: as grating turds in the intestines are to the private body.
[On journalists:] ... however lyingly libellous they may be: nobody can seriously hurt the reputation of a Great person. If he is hurt: he is not Great. They can but scratch at his skin with their mice nails.
the systematic abuse with which the newspapers of one side assail every candidate coming forward on the other, is the cause of many honorable men, who have a regard to their reputation, being deterred from entering public life; and of the people being thus deprived of some better servants than any they have.
Journalism is an extraordinary and terrible privilege. Not by chance, if you are aware of it, does it consume you with a hundred feelings of inadequacy. Not by chance, when I find myself going through an event or an important encounter, does it seize me like anguish, a fear of not having enough eyes and enough ears and enough brains to look and listen and understand like a worm hidden in the wood of history.
Journalism combines adventure with culture.
The motion picture is like journalism in that, more than any of the other arts, it confers celebrity. Not just on people - on acts, and objects, and places, and ways of life. The camera brings a kind of stardom to them all. I therefore doubt that film can ever argue effectively against its own material: that a genuine antiwar film, say, can be made on the basis of even the ugliest battle scenes ... No matter what filmmakers intend, film always argues yes.
Gathering news in Russia was like mining coal with a hat pin.
There is too great a tendency (perhaps encouraged by popular journalism) to deal with the dramatic moments, forgetting that these are not always the most significant moments. ... To find the significant rather than the dramatic features of industrial controversy, of a disagreement in regard to policy on board of directors or between managers, is essential to integrative business policies.
the press is too often a distorting mirror, which deforms the people and events it represents, making them seem bigger or smaller than they really are.
Journalism is an immense power, that threatens soon to supersede sermons, lectures, and books.
Journalism at its best and most effective is education. Apparently people would not learn for themselves, nor from others.
[On the press:] I love working with children, and I have learned to be very patient with them.
Truth is the hardest substance in the world to pin down. But the one certainty is the awesome penalty exacted sooner or later from a society whose reporters stop trying.
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