Quotes About Journalism

Journalists who swallow the subject's account whole and publish it are not journalists but publicists.

In fact, I spent 25 years as a reporter, swearing I would never become an editor. Sitting at a desk, watching other people go out and find the story, and then fussing with other people's words - I just didn't get the appeal of that.

In journalism it is simpler to sound off than it is to find out. It is more elegant to pontificate than it is to sweat.

Journalists like to say I started off sweeping the pottery floors. But it was just a short-lived part time job doing that after I left school.

In many ways, Tucker Carlson's a better symbol of the pathetic state of what passes for conservative journalism than even Glenn Beck or the late Andrew Breitbart, to name two of his contemporaries with a much larger following.

CNN is an American symbol of independent journalism and First Amendment free speech. My board and I are clear: CNN will remain completely independent from an editorial perspective.

Fiction isn't made by scraping the bones of topicality for the last shreds and sinews, to be processed into mechanically recovered prose. Like journalism, it deals in ideas as well as facts, but also in metaphors, symbols and myths.

Those who peacefully gather to express sympathy for the family of Michael Brown must have their rights respected at all times. And journalists must not be harassed or prevented from covering a story that needs to be told.

Jamal Khashoggi was a Muslim Brotherhood operative, and so I don't really feel sympathy for him.

News writing and sports writing have become synonymous. And it started with, you know, free agency, and now it's in the concussion debate.

There are different opinions across the Middle East of Al-Jazeera. They've been kicked out of Egypt and Jordan and then let back in; they've been totally banned from Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Syria.

I'm astonished by how much journalists stay with the story, try to get to the truth of the story, maybe give years of their life to it, maybe go over to Syria, maybe lose their life. Then, the next day, it's a new story.

We journalists are a bit like vultures, feasting on war, scandal and disaster. Turn on the news, and you see Syrian refugees, Volkswagen corruption, dysfunctional government. Yet that reflects a selection bias in how we report the news: We cover planes that crash, not planes that take off.

Journalism is the ability to meet the challenge of filling space

He wrote short and he wrote often, which tended to obscure the fact that he wrote well. Unless it leads to obscurity, brevity is rarely praised (or employed) in the journals of, ah, serious literary criticism, and frequency is often equated with frivolity.

He [Edward Snowden] has been careful with his info, doling it out to responsible news organizations — The Post, the New York Times, the Guardian, etc. — and not tossing it up in the air, WikiLeaks style, and echoing the silly mantra "Information wants to be free." (No. Information, like most of us, wants a home in the Hamptons.)" – Richard Cohen, Washington Post (10/22/2013)

What the president never accepted, or even clearly understood – as most people don't understand – is the autonomy editors have, and must have, to produce a good newspaper. I used to describe it as liberty, not license.

No longer would the Post write such lines as one identified by Chal Roberts in his history of the paper: "Sam Jones, 24, Negro, was arrested for larceny yesterday." Overnight, he eliminated "freebies"—trips paid for by the government and free tickets for anything. Also, after just a few weeks on the job, he called in the police reporter, Al Lewis, to ask if he was having parking

I called Clay from the SUV. How'd it go at the paper? he asked. She called me perky. Ouch.

The American papers, which had been available in Vladivostok, were more honest than the British. Lev

Ya no había representantes elegidos democráticamente, todos los diputados del Reichstag eran nazis. Tampoco había auténticos periodistas, solo aduladores serviles.

The press is not only free, it is powerful. That power is ours. It is the proudest that man can enjoy.

I believe in the power of journalism. To make informed decisions, you have to have an understanding of the dynamics of a situation. And journalism does bridge gaps and creates dialogue.

I was a political journalist; I came to writing novels through an interest in politics and power.