Media Quotes

Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers is another.

G. K. Chesterton, "On the Crypti

Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

Thomas Jefferson, "Letter to Col

There was a time when the reader of an unexciting newspaper would remark, 'How dull is the world today!' Nowadays he says, 'What a dull newspaper!'

Daniel J. Boorstin, The Image, 1

The window to the world can be covered by a newspaper.

Stanislaw Lec, Unkempt Thoughts,

The function of the press in society is to inform, but its role in society is to make money.

A. J. Liebling, The Press, 1961

By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.

Oscar Wilde

News is history shot on the wing. The huntsmen from the Fourth Estate seek to bag only the peacock or the eagle of the swifting day.

Gene Fowler, Skyline, 1961

A reporter is always concerned with tomorrow. There's nothing tangible of yesterday. All I can say I've done is agitate the air ten or fifteen minutes and then boom -- it's gone.

Edward R. Murrow, News Summaries

No news at 4:30 a.m. is good.

Lady Bird Johnson, A White House

Reporters thrive on the world's misfortune. For this reason they often take an indecent pleasure in events that dismay the rest of humanity.

Russell Baker, The Good Times, 1

Th' newspaper does ivrything f'r us. It runs th' polis foorce an' th' banks, commands th' milishy, controls th'ligislachure, baptizes th' young, marries th' foolish, comforts th' afflicted, afflicts th' comfortable, buries th' dead an' roasts thim aftherward.

Finley Peter Dunne, "Mr. Dooley'

To the best of my knowledge and belief, the average American newspaper, even of the so-called better sort, is not only quite as bad as Upton Sinclair says it is, but 10 times worse

H. L. Mencken, 1941

The greatest felony in the news business today is to be behind, or to miss a big story. So speed and quantity substitute for thoroughness and quality, for accuracy and context.

Carl Bernstein, In Guardian, (Lo

It is impossible to read the daily press without being diverted from reality. You are full of enthusiasm for the eternal verities-life is worth living, and then out of sinful curiosity you open a newspaper. You are disillusioned and wrecked.

Patrick Kavanaugh

Belief is with them mechanical, voluntary: they believe what they are paid for -- they swear to that which turns to account. Do you suppose, that after years spent in this manner, they have any feeling left answering to the difference between truth and falsehood?

William Hazlitt

Not only do we have a right to know, we have a duty to know what our Government is doing in our name. If there's a criticism to be made today, it's that the press isn't doing enough to put the pressure on the government to provide information.

Walter Cronkite

The futility of everything that comes to us from the media is the inescapable consequence of the absolute inability of that particular stage to remain silent. Music, commercial breaks, news flashes, adverts, news broadcasts, movies, presenters -- there is no alternative but to fill the screen; otherwise there would be an irremediable void. That's why the slightest technical hitch, the slightest slip on the part of the presenter becomes so exciting, for it reveals the depth of the emptiness squinting out at us through this little window.

Jean Baudrillard

Cinema, radio, television, magazines are a school of inattention: people look without seeing, listen in without hearing.

Robert Bresson

The press and politicians. A delicate relationship. Too close, and danger ensues. Too far apart and democracy itself cannot function without the essential exchange of information. Creative leaks, a discreet lunch, interchange in the Lobby, the art of the unattributable telephone call, late at night.

Howard Brenton

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

Graham Greene