Journalist Quotes - Page 25

• The image of the journalist as wallflower at the orgy has been replaced by the journalist as the life of the party.

  Nora Ephron

  Party, Has Beens, Replaced

  FaceBook post by Nora Ephron from Jan 12, 2012

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• In the developed countries of the capitalist world, the mass media are beginning to become businesses, and huge businesses at that. The freedom of journalists is now becoming, in most cases, a very relative thing: it ends where the interests of the business begin... In socialist areas, it is enough to recall that the means of social communication are the monopoly of the party.

  Hélder Câmara

  Country, Communication, Party

  Hélder Câmara (1971). “Spiral of Violence”, Burns & Oates

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• I had an American journalist say to me, "Is it true you wrote the whole of the first novel on napkins?" I was tempted to say, "On teabags, I used to save them.

  J. K. Rowling

  Firsts, Napkins, Used

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• Here in the United States, we speak with reverence of authentic experience. We write poems about our daddies taking us fishing and breaking our hearts by making us throw the little fish back into the river. We even tell the reader the kind of car we were driving, the year and the model, to give the impression that it’s all true. It’s because we think of ourselves as journalists of a kind. Like them, we’ll go anywhere for a story. Don’t believe a word of it. As any poet can tell you, one often sees better with eyes closed than with eyes wide open.

  Charles Simic

  Believe, Eye, Writing

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• From the essay "Twenty-five Things People Have a Shocking Capacity to Be Surprised by Over and Over Again" 1. Journalists sometimes make things up. 2. Journalists sometimes get things wrong. 3. Almost all books that are published as memoirs were initially written as novels, and then the agent/editor said, This might work better as a memoir. 6. Freedom of the press belongs to the man who owns one.

  Nora Ephron

  Book, Men, Editors

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• I hate the world and almost all the people in it. I hate the Labour Congress and the journalists who send men to be slaughtered, and the fathers who feel a smug pride when their sons are killed, and even the pacifists who keep saying human nature is essentially good, in spite of all the daily proofs to the contrary. I hate the planet and the human race—I am ashamed to belong to such a species.

  Bertrand Russell

  Father, Hate, Pride

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Autobiography”, p.289, Routledge

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• As I glanced at the phraseology of the research report, dull and unfathomable to outsiders like me, I thought that if you have the ambition to become a villain, the first thing you should do is learn to be impenetrable. Don’t act like Blofeld—monocled and ostentatious. We journalists love writing about eccentrics. We hate writing about impenetrable, boring people. It makes us look bad: the duller the interviewee, the duller the prose. If you want to get away with wielding true, malevolent power, be boring.

  Jon Ronson

  Hate, Writing, Ambition

  Jon Ronson (2012). “Jon Ronson's Adventures With Extraordinary People”, p.534, Pan Macmillan

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• No honest journalist should be willing to describe himself or herseif as 'embedded.' To say, 'I'm an embedded journalist' is to say, 'I'm a government Propagandist.

  Noam Chomsky

  Government, Honest, Embedded

  Noam Chomsky, David Barsamian (2010). “Imperial Ambitions: Conversations on the Post-9/11 World”, p.34, Macmillan

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• I changed my mind. I don’t want to be an inveshtigative journalist anymore. I want to be a professional rum drinker.” “There are people who do that,” Duff said. He’d barely sipped his rum. “Really? What do you call them?” “Alcoholics.

  Libba Bray

  People, Mind, Want

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• The newspaper journalists like to believe the worst; they can sell more papers that way, as one of them told me himself; for even upstanding and respectable people dearly love to read ill of others.

  Margaret Atwood

  Believe, People, Paper

  Margaret Atwood (1997). “Alias Grace”

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• A journalist finds out things by asking questions of people who know.

  Steig Larsson

  Asking Questions, People, Knows

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• What else has a journalist to do these days, after all, but report life's miseries?

  John le Carre

  Misery, These Days, Reports

  John le Carre (2002). “The Honourable Schoolboy”, p.35, Simon and Schuster

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• I knew that a historian (or a journalist, or anyone telling a story) was forced to choose, out of an infinite number of facts, what to present, what to omit. And that decision inevitably would reflect, whether consciously or not, the interests of the historian.

  Howard Zinn

  Numbers, Decision, Stories

  Howard Zinn (2014). “A People's History of the United States”, p.604, Pan Macmillan

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• If I wasn't going to be a world-famous journalist and if I didn't have such respect for truth and justice, I could be an amazing master criminal.

  Sarah Rees Brennan

  Justice, Criminals, World

  Sarah Rees Brennan (2012). “Unspoken”, p.121, Simon and Schuster

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• Eric Seven does not believe in love at first sight. He corrects himself. Even in that moment, the moment that it happens, he fees his journalist’s brain make a correction, rubbing out a long-held belief, writing a new one in its place. He did not believe in love at first sight. He thinks he might do so now.

  Marcus Sedgwick

  Believe, Writing, Thinking

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• There are always more questions. Science as a process is never complete. It is not a foot race, with a finish line.... People will always be waiting at a particular finish line: journalists with their cameras, impatient crowds eager to call the race, astounded to see the scientists approach, pass the mark, and keep running. It's a common misunderstanding, he said. They conclude there was no race. As long as we won't commit to knowing everything, the presumption is we know nothing.

  Barbara Kingsolver

  Running, Race, Knowing Everything

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• The man is a humbug — a vulgar, shallow, self-satisfied mind, absolutely inaccessible to the complexities and delicacies of the real world. He has the journalist's air of being a specialist in everything, of taking in all points of view and being always on the side of the angels: he merely annoys a reader who has the least experience of knowing things, of what knowing is like. There is not two pence worth of real thought or real nobility in him. But he isn't dull.

  C. S. Lewis

  Real, Angel, Men

  Diary entry regarding Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay, in July 1924. "Letters of C. S. Lewis". Book edited by W. H. Lewis, p. 97, 1966.

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• A journalist is stimulated by a deadline. He writes worse when he has time

  Karl Kraus

  Time, Writing, Deadline

  Karl Kraus (1976). “Half-truths & one-and-a-half truths: selected aphorisms”

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• As you probably know, some American politicians and American journalists refer to Washington, DC as the "capital of the free world." But it seems to me that Brussels, which boasts 1,000 years of history and which serves as the capital of Belgium, the home of the European Union, and the headquarters for NATO, this city has its own legitimate claim to that title.

  Joe Biden

  Home, Years, Cities

  "Biden Says Brussels Could Be 'Capital of the Free World'", www.foxnews.com. May 25, 2010.

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• Becoming a politician is the only step down I could take from being a journalist.

  Jim Hightower

  Political, Politics, Becoming

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• ...secular journalists... tend to accept uncritically the oft - repeated Evangelical Protestant and Conservative Roman Catholic definitions that the Bible is anti - gay. If these people were honest, they would have to admit that the Bible is also pro - slavery and anti - women.

  John Shelby Spong

  Gay, People, Catholic

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• There is only one way of surviving all the early heartbreaks in this business. You must have a sense of humor. And I think it also helps if you are a dreamer. I had my dreams all right. And that is something no one can ever take away. They cost nothing, and they can be as real as you like to make them. You own your dreams and they are priceless. I've been a lavatory attendant, a theatre usher, a panhandler, all for real. Now, as an actor, I can be a journalist today and a brain surgeon tomorrow. That's the stuff my dreams are made of.

  Al Pacino

  Dream, Real, Thinking

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• There is a type of snobbish, pompous journalist who thinks that the only news that has any validity is war, famine, pestilence or politics. I don’t come from that school.

  Piers Morgan

  War, School, Thinking

  "POLITICO interviews Piers Morgan". Interview with Dylan Byers, www.politico.com. January 17, 2013.

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• A journalist once asked me what I would like my epitaph to be and I said I think I would like it to be 'He did very little harm'. And that's not easy. Most people seem to me to do a great deal of harm. If I could be remembered as having done very little, that would suit me.

  Paul Eddington

  Thinking, People, Done

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

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• As a journalist, one tends to think there's nothing off limits

  Peter Jennings

  Thinking, Media, Limits

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