Journalism Quotes

What passes for investigative journalism is finding somebody with their pants down - literally or otherwise.

You can crush a man with journalism.

Never awake me when you have good news to announce,
because with good news nothing presses;
but when you have bad news,
arouse me immediately,
for then there is not an instant to be lost.

The press is the enemy.

I have a journalism degree, but I'd rather be the person who is being written about rather than the person who is writing.

[On journalists:] We are a noisy, imperfect lot, struggling to scribble what has been called the first draft of history.

The only school that let me in was U.C. Santa Cruz, which is where I went. They didn't have a journalism program, so I took sociology, which is the closest thing to journalism.

What journalism is really about-it's to monitor power and the centres of power.

Journalism, spooked by rumors of its own obsolescence, has stopped believing in itself. Groans of doom alternate with panicked happy talk.

For most folks, no news is good news; for the press, good news is not news.

That [photographs] disturb readers is exactly as it should be: that's why photojournalism is often more powerful than written journalism.

A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.

Numerous politicians have seized absolute power and muzzled the press. Never in history has the press seized absolute power and muzzled the politicians.

Journalism, some huge percentage of it, should be devoted to putting pressure on power, on nonsense, on chicanery of all kinds and if that's going to invite a lawsuit, well, bring it on.

And that's the way it is.

Journalism is an act of faith in the future.

Any work of art that can be understood is the product of journalism. The rest, called literature, is a dossier of human imbecility for the guidance of future professors.

If journalism is good, it is controversial, by its nature.

Journalism is not a profession, but a mission.

The present crisis of Western democracy is a crisis in journalism.

The best fiction is far more true than any journalism.

The central dilemma in journalism is that you don't know what you don't know.

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

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

Any work of art that can be understood is the product of journalism.

The reason I often say, for me, photography is analogous to poetry, for my kind of work more so than journalism, is because it's so open to interpretation. And I'm very happy having different interpretations of it.

The first rough draft of history.

I would trust citizen journalism as much as I would trust citizen surgery.

Journalism is organized gossip.

Journalism kills you, but it keeps you alive as long as you're doing it.

Reform keeps many scores of newspapers in its service, but not one man.

There is nothing like daily journalism! Best damn job in the world!

Fiction is a bridge to the truth that journalism can't reach.

Journalism at its best and most effective is education. Apparently people would not learn for themselves, nor from others.

I've always said there's a place for the press but they haven't dug it yet.

Journalism is the only thinkable alternative to working.

Every journalist owes tribute to the evil one.

Media is just a word that has come to mean bad journalism.

The newspaperman has become a walking plague. He spreads the contagion of lies and calumnies.

Journalism is to politician as dog is to lamp-post.

Ultimately journalism has changed... partisanship is very much a part of journalism now.

It's very hard in our adversarial society to find a third view. Take journalism, where everything is always presented as one person against another: "Now we're going to hear the opposing view." There is never a third view.

Fantasy should be as close as possible to journalism.

I've found there to be a tremendous amount of East Coast snobbery in the journalism world.

Writers are always selling somebody out.

Journalists who make mistakes get sued for libel; historians who make mistakes get to publish a revised edition.

A journalist is a person who has mistaken their calling.

The press has bravely and nobly eroded the public trust... What I'm advocating is the media come work for us again. Remove themselves from the symbiotic relationship that they have developed with the power structure of corporations and of the politicians.

It's all storytelling, you know. That's what journalism is all about.

Anonymous sources are to journalism what silicon enhancements are to the feminine figure; they look impressive to the gullible, but something doesn't feel right.