Quotes About Journalism

bigger numbers make better headlines.

They're called 'facts', and my role is to amplify those, not cheerlead. And I don't care at all what you think of my motives.

When journalists are 'accused' of being 'advocates', that means: challenging and deviating from DC orthodoxies.

US journalists, for years overwhelmingly enamored of Barack Obama, were now commonly speaking of him in these terms: as some sort of grave menace to press freedoms, the most repressive leader in this regard since Richard Nixon. That was quite a remarkable turn for a politician who was ushered into power vowing "the most transparent administration in US history.

Rich, famous, insider journalists do not want to subvert the status quo that so lavishly rewards them. Like all courtiers, they are eager to defend the system that vests them with their privileges and contemptuous of anyone who challenges that system.

The free press guarantee does not only protect corporate reporters but anyone engaged in journalism, whether employed or not.

The perceptions and pronouncements of human beings are inherently subjective. Every news article is the product of all sorts of highly subjective cultural, nationalistic, and political assumptions. And all journalism serves one faction's interest or another's. The

The very idea that reporters should be free of opinions is far from some time-honored requirement of the profession; in fact, it is a relatively new concoction that has the effect, if not the intent, to neuter journalism. This

Promoting the human capacity to reason and make decisions: that is the purpose of whistle-blowing, of activism, of political journalism.

He had come to believe that the paper's concealment of that information may very well have changed the outcome of the 2004 election. "Hiding that story changed history," he said.

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

In pre-Watergate, pre-sexual revolution times, such stories just weren't written.

I had retreated to reporting because I doubted the reality of my inner voice

The journalist and critic I. F. Stone would call the state of mind that permitted the Pearl Harbor attack "sheer stodgy unimaginative bureaucratic complacency.

In the name of speed, Morse and Vail had realized that they could save strokes by reserving the shorter sequences of dots and dashes for the most common letters. But which letters would be used most often? Little was known about the alphabet's statistics. In search of data on the letters' relative frequencies, Vail was inspired to visit the local newspaper office in Morristown, New Jersey, and look over the type cases.

When I was growing up, I remember my uncle Bret 'Hitman' Hart having his own column in the Calgary Sun. To me, this was beyond cool.

My uncle was a photographer for 'The Irish Times.'

I don't attempt to make people uncomfortable; I think that my standards in terms of art and journalism always have necessitated my discomfort.

I do think, with any beat, it helps to establish a basic level of comfort and cordiality, especially if you plan to ask uncomfortable questions. Sitting down in person for a meal or a coffee can help that.

It was this fascination with hidden lives, I suspect, that led me to journalism; seeking to uncover the truth about people became a job.

James O'Keefe is a journalist, doing the work 'real' journalists don't dare, and has been conducting undercover investigations for years with dozens of scalps collected along the way. The more the 'true' journalists who back the Democrat machine attack him, the more emboldened he becomes to pursue his next project.

If I wasn't a writer/director, I would be an investigative journalist. There's something about being an undercover journalist. I mean, that's freakin' cool!

What the right-wing in the United States tries to do is undermine the press.

Since I was 18, I've been under orders from magazines and newspapers - chiefly The New York Times and Rolling Stone - to step into the lives of musicians, actors, and artists, and somehow find out who they really are underneath the mask they present to the public. But I didn't always succeed.