Quotes About Communication

In a world of cell phones and satellite feeds - a world in which the president can sit in the White House situation room and watch a military action unfold on the other side of the world - it is not realistic to expect TV news to be anything but what it has become: a ceaseless flow of words and images that may or may not be accurate.

The one thing I was always told is you absolutely have to tell truth to power. Whether you're a second lieutenant working with a captain and a lieutenant colonel, or a four-star general working with the Office Secretary of Defense and the White House, the decision makers have got to have ground truth.

If there were things I felt the White House needed to be doing differently, I'd probably call them. I have a saying, and I had this in Michigan as chair, which is, 'We're a family.' When you have a difference of opinion in your family, you don't go on 'Jerry Springer'; you pick up the phone, and you call your family member.

As a reporter having covered him for eight years in the White House, I am sure the press could have done a better job if we had known the real Ronald Reagan.

If you think the Obama White House and Ben Rhodes lying to the American people about Iran - and laughing about it - was bad, just wait until Hillary Clinton's spin doctors get hold of the media.

The Secretary of the State at the time was James Baker, who had also been Secretary of Treasury and White House Chief of Staff: very powerful guy. And I went to see him in his very ornate office at the State Department to say I wasn't going to cover him anymore. It was just a courtesy call.

We absolutely look at larger trends and reactions on Twitter here at the White House.

There is no law that guarantees press access to the White House. Communication was lessening during the Obama years. There was every reason to suspect that Trump was going to create an adversarial relationship and that people were going to be faced with the impossible dilemma between sort-of-complicity and access.

There is no method by which an average citizen can effectively fight the White House in the media.

If you write something the White House doesn't like, they take you in and say, 'If you ever write something like you did today, nobody from the White House will ever talk to you again,'

I've covered the White House and been yelled at by presidents.

What is the appetite for truth in the Trump White House? That's not a question about the untrue things the president says. It's about the level of truth the system expects.

It must be remembered that the Bush White House has a separate talent for character assassination that must not be confused with a talent for governance.

I was given no special information by the White House, or by anybody else, for that matter.

Phones rang constantly, as if the White House was conducting some kind of pardon telethon.

I would say that President Roosevelt probably was more intimately in touch with the press corps at the White House than President Truman was.

If I am communicating to my readers exactly what the White House believes on any certain issue, that's reporting to them an unvarnished, unfiltered version of what they - the Administration - believe.

The first person who contacted us was the assistant to President Eisenhower... in the White House.

When I worked at the White House in the mid-1990s, I would not have dreamed of sharing my beliefs on faith with my colleagues.

I send messages to the White House continuously.

My liberal friends love to dismiss Reagan. You know, they'll say something like, 'Oh, didn't he, like, only read one-page memos when he was in the White House?' Well, that's just good managerial practice. I mean, Franklin Roosevelt made people write one-page memos.

I don't know any member of Congress who ever said, 'I'm satisfied with the communication that we have from the White House.'

I don't think they need to be nice to reporters, but the White House seems to imagine that releasing information is like a tap that can be turned on and off at their whim.

I feel like I don't hit the radio button ever - or not enough, even on the good stuff. I do shout some stuff when I'm mad at myself, but I'm pretty good about not hitting the radio button.