Journalism Quotes

“Jessamine recoiled from the paper as if it were a snake. "A lady does not read the newspaper. The society pages, perhaps, or the theater news. Not this filth."
"But you are not a lady, Jessamine---," Charlotte began.
"Dear me," said Will. "Such harsh truths so early in the morning cannot be good for the digestion.”
― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel

“I don't think a tough question is disrespectful.”
― Helen Thomas

“The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“Myth is much more important and true than history. History is just journalism and you know how reliable that is.”
― Joseph Campbell

“I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“The press is a gang of cruel faggots. Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits—a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

“You're miserable, edgy and tired. You're in the perfect mood for journalism.”
― Warren Ellis

“If I want to knock a story off the front page, I just change my hairstyle.”
― Hillary Rodham Clinton

“Journalism largely consists in saying "Lord Jones is dead" to people who never knew Lord Jones was alive.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“I became a journalist because I did not want to rely on newspapers for information.”
― Christopher Hitchens

“Better a good journalist than a poor assassin.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“All things must be examined, debated, investigated without exception and without regard for anyone's feelings.”
― Denis Diderot

“I think being a liberal, in the true sense, is being nondoctrinaire, nondogmatic, non-committed to a cause - but examining each case on its merits. Being left of center is another thing; it's a political position. I think most newspapermen by definition have to be liberal; if they're not liberal, by my definition of it, then they can hardly be good newspapermen. If they're preordained dogmatists for a cause, then they can't be very good journalists; that is, if they carry it into their journalism."

[Interview with Ron Powers (Chicago Sun Times) for Playboy, 1973]”
― Walter Cronkite

“So much for Objective Journalism. Don't bother to look for it here--not under any byline of mine; or anyone else I can think of. With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72

“By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.”
― Oscar Wilde

“If a person is not talented enough to be a novelist, not smart enough to be a lawyer, and his hands are too shaky to perform operations, he becomes a journalist. ”
― Norman Mailer

“When journalism is silenced, literature must speak. Because while journalism speaks with facts, literature speaks with truth.”
― Seno Gumira Ajidarma, Ketika Jurnalisme Dibungkam Sastra Harus Bicara

“To read a newspaper is to refrain from reading something worthwhile. [....] The first discipline of education must therefore be to refuse resolutely to feed the mind with canned chatter.”
― Aleister Crowley, The Confessions of Aleister Crowley: An Autohagiography

“But my way of writing is rather to think aloud, and follow my own humours, than much to consider who is listening to me; and, if I stop to consider what is proper to be said to this or that person, I shall soon come to doubt whether any part at all is proper.”
― Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater

“American journalism (like the journalism of any other country) is predominantly paltry and worthless. Its pretensions are enormous, but its achievements are insignificant.”
― H. L. Mencken

“Looking back, I still can't believe how unprofessional the news media was. So much spin, so few hard facts. All those digestible sound bites from an army of 'experts' all contradicting one another, all trying to seem more 'shocking' and 'in-depth' than the last one. It was all so confusing, nobody seemed to know what to do.”
― Max Brooks, World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

“It is not enough for journalists to see themselves as mere messengers without understanding the hidden agendas of the message and the myths that surround it.”
― John Pilger, Hidden Agendas

“Freedom of speech gives us the right to offend others, whereas freedom of thought gives them the choice as to whether or not to be offended.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“All you have to do [to win a Pulitzer Prize] is spend your life running from one awful place to another, write about every horrible thing you see. The civilized world reads about it, then forgets it, but pats you on the head for doing it and gives you a reward as appreciation for changing nothing.”
― David Baldacci, The Christmas Train

“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, A People’s History of the United States: 1492 - Present

“We are beckoned to see the world through a one-way mirror, as if we are threatened and innocent and the rest of humanity is threatening, or wretched, or expendable. Our memory is struggling to rescue the truth that human rights were not handed down as privileges from a parliament, or a boardroom, or an institution, but that peace is only possible with justice and with information that gives us the power to act justly.”
― John Pilger

“Journalism…is an unreliable aggregation of belief spaces.”
― Amy L. Bernstein, The Potrero Complex

“The last few weeks of that summer, Janice lost interest in our conversations…. Her mind was taking her to other places, as though she was listening to a song or watching a movie or reading a book we could neither see nor hear.”
― Karen Hinton, Penis Politics: A Memoir of Women, Men and Power

“* *Do remember that dishonesty and cowardice always have to be paid for.*Don’t imagine that for years on end you can make yourself the boot-licking propagandist of the Soviet régime, or any other régime, and then suddenly return to mental decency. Once a whore, always a whore.”
― George Orwell, As I Please: 1943-1945

“Moments from their life together flickered: their first time making love. Eating pizza on the floor of their city apartment. The way he gently laid his thumb to still her wildly twitching eye. Who was he now? Who was she? What was happening? … Yes, my partner is a thief. A thief in the night.”
― Amy L. Bernstein, The Potrero Complex