Top 100 Quotes About Journalism
#1. Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective Journalism
which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place.
Hunter S. Thompson
#2. As much as the Pulitzer is the hallmark of journalism, I think what I love the most is when somebody says they took my column and it's in their wallet. I have had people open their wallet and show me a corner of a column.
Regina Brett
#3. 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.
Alex Pareene
#4. The newspaperman has become a walking plague. He spreads the contagion of lies and calumnies.
Mahatma Gandhi
#5. I like keeping my work so open that it can be interpreted on different levels. Art can't be compared with journalism; it can't discuss concrete issues.
Mona Hatoum
#6. [I am enthusiastic about journalism because] it's a craft that can ... galvanize an often complacent citizenry, and make a difference.
Katie Couric
#7. The day you write to please everyone you no longer are in journalism. You are in show business.
Frank Miller
#9. Writing one's first novel, getting it sold, and shepherding it through the labyrinths of editing, production, marketing, journalism, and social media is an arduous and nerve-wracking process.
Paul Di Filippo
#10. One of the most useful pieces of advice we've learned in our journalism careers is summed up in the phrase "beware the fallacy of evil men.
Bill Kovach
#11. I can only speak as an American, but most journalism here isn't doing its job any more. It's about selling stuff.
Lance Reddick
#12. If that is what makes us liberals, so be it, just as long as in reporting the news we adhere to the first ideals of good journalism
that news reports must be fair, accurate and unbiased.
Walter Cronkite
#13. Journalism is nine-tenths being in the right places at the right time.
Andrew Marr
#14. Journalism, like history, has no therapeutic value; it is better able to diagnose than to cure, and it provides society with a primitive means of psychoanalysis that allows the patient to judge the distance between fantasy and reality.
Bill Vaughan
#15. One of the sad things about contemporary journalism is that it actually matters very little. The world now is almost inured to the power of journalism. The best journalism would manage to outrage people. And people are less and less inclined to outrage.
David Simon
#16. Good journalism should challenge people, not just mindlessly amuse them.
Carl Bernstein
#17. The story unfolded quickly as I typed, in a way I was becoming familiar with. There was something about putting the truth on paper, bringing facts into the light of day where everyone could look at them, that made my fingers move faster -- it was becoming one of my favorite sensations on earth.
Gwenda Bond
#18. It's the great flaw of journalism. The more something happens, the less newsworthy it is.
Nathan Hill
#19. We don't go into journalism to be popular. It is our job to seek the truth and put constant pressure on our leaders until we get answers.
Helen Thomas
#20. People who use dirty methods to hurt others ... will be destroyed with methods that are even dirtier than theirs!! That's what I call justice!! Not to mention ... journalism! - Wolfgangina Lalla Getto
Tite Kubo
#21. Truthfully, without over-egging it, as I often do, the library and journalism, those things made me who I am.
Terry Pratchett
#22. In a way, film and television are in the same sort of traumatic trance that print journalism is. The technology has outpaced our comprehension of its implications.
Tony Kushner
#23. Social media is the greatest boon to journalism since the printing press.
Vivian Schiller
#24. My heart pounded annoyingly in my ears, and it was getting harder to stay focused. I'd almost gotten trapped in here, and now I'd come back. Sometimes I did have truly terrible ideas.
Gwenda Bond
#25. People who think there is something pedestrian about journalism are just ignorant.
Rick Bragg
#26. There is a tradition that sees journalism as the dark side of literature, with book writing at its zenith. I don't agree. I think that all written work constitutes literature, even graffiti.
Eduardo Galeano
#27. I'm not sophisticated when it comes to politics, when it comes to journalism.
Aaron Sorkin
#28. The only authors whom I acknowledge as American are the journalists. They, indeed, are not great writers, but they speak the language of their countrymen, and make themselves heard by them.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#29. I think we in journalism were really late to social networks. We had a built-in network already in terms of our readers, and we didn't capitalize on that.
Nicholas Kristof
#30. The history of the GDR journalism is a story of partisanship.
Patrick Conley
#31. My first real writing job was at 'Rolling Stone,' so I wrote about rock-and-roll and politics and the like. At the time, I really didn't know what I wanted to write, and I did a bunch of investigative journalism.
Tim Cahill
#32. Even before I joined journalism, I knew that this is what I wanted to do. Tintin was an early inspiration.
Bobby Ghosh
#33. If you've done a bit of journalism, everyone assumes you must be moving into PR. We're absolutely not becoming a PR agency and we're not turning into Brunswick. We will remain SRU, but we will be owned by the Brunswick Group. It's quite different.
Peter York
#34. What passes for investigative journalism is finding somebody with their pants down - literally or otherwise.
Robert Scheer
#36. Someone else deciding what was too dangerous for me to be involved in or pursue had never stopped me yet.
Gwenda Bond
#37. I like storms. I would say I actively like stormy weather. I would not be afraid of them. I think that if I had not pursued journalism, I think storm-chasing would've been a really fun career.
Chuck Klosterman
#38. Like every other industry or institution, the journalism world is populated by the petty and fearful, in addition to the courageous and brilliant.
Peter Landesman
#39. I don't mind my friends calling me "Thornes," but the fact of people calling me "Prickly Thornes" draws the line.
Simi Sunny
#40. Journalists should be watchdogs, not lapdogs.
Newton Lee
#41. It's true that journalism in reality is not the journalism that we learnt in the university. It is far from it.
Nilantha Ilangamuwa
#42. Whether it's long-form journalism or investigative journalism, it's no fun to just be the guy diagnosing the problem.
Clay Shirky
#44. The Guardian's 'Word of Mouth' blog bridges the gap between blogging and serious food journalism.
Yotam Ottolenghi
#45. The challenge in fiction is to write a terrific story. The challenge in journalism is to communicate solid, objective information. The challenge in creative non-fiction is to do it both and to do it well.
Lee Gutkind
#46. Frighteningly honest. What Anthony Bourdain did to the world of cooking in Kitchen Confidential, Leopold will do to the world of journalism. It's Sid & Nancy meets All the President's Men.
Rob Cohen
#47. Choosing my favorite moment in journalism would be like picking a favorite among my children. I can't pick one favorite.
Bill Keller
#48. Media was once about protecting a name; on the web it is about building one.
Ryan Holiday
#49. In most daily journalism, you only fact-check something if it seems a little fishy.
Ira Glass
#50. I eventually got a job with a television company, started to see how exciting journalism could be as a career, and decided that was what I wanted to do.
Anne Robinson
#51. I've always felt privileged to cover the White House and to have that ringside seat to history
Helen Thomas
#52. Journalism still, in a democracy, is the essential force to get the public educated and mobilized to take action on behalf of our ancient ideals.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#53. A TV show can't hold people and institutions to account like good journalism can.
David Simon
#54. Good journalism is crucial. Good journalism isn't easy so I think it's less about what story and more about the layers and context that need to be explored in the story. That's one of the reasons why I'm excited to be a part of CNN. This is the kind of place that you can do that.
George Stroumboulopoulos
#55. Fortunately, I discovered journalism. Talent hasn't been a question since. But
P. J. O'Rourke
#56. With technology and social media and citizen journalism, every rock that used to go unturned is now being flipped, lit and put on TV.
LZ Granderson
#57. I'm a member of the working press; you'd think I'd know better than to listen to journalists.
P. J. O'Rourke
#58. Someday the Sun will explode, and what about our journalism and poetry then? Well, so what? To hell with our exploding Sun. We have to do what we can do in the time we can act.
Bruce Sterling
#59. Among the reasons that you go into journalism, I suppose, are some rather idealistic, even foolish reasons. In my case one of the reasons was I wanted to explain how things really work, how political power really works.
Robert Caro
#60. Al journalism should be investigative, from football to cookery
John Pilger
#61. Journalism: an ability to meet the challenge of filling the space.
Rebecca West
#62. I can't think in terms of journalism without thinking in terms of political ends. Unless there's been a reaction, there's been no journalism. It's cause and effect.
Hunter S. Thompson
#63. Stories, as we're taught in journalism school early on, are told through people. Those stories make our documentaries powerful. You can explore someone's culture, you can explore their experience, you can explore an issue through human beings who are going through it.
Soledad O'Brien
#64. I find it interesting, the different rules that apply to journalism and drama, even though journalism has become more and more about entertainment, and entertainment has become more and more about journalism.
Gus Van Sant
#65. It would be easy to descend into despair, not only about the state of journalism, but the future of American democracy. But giving up is not an option. There is too much at stake.
Laurie Garrett
#66. In early 1970, Newsweek's editors decided that the new women's liberation movement deserved a cover story. There was one problem, however: there were no women to write the piece.
Lynn Povich
#67. We didn't see what happened after mortars landed, only the puff of smoke. There were horrors that were completely left out of this war. So was this journalism? Or was this coverage?
Ashleigh Banfield
#68. It is not commercial success but originality and proof of autonomy which are admired.
Angela Phillips
#69. And then I settled into the most natural thing for a man with no real talents.
Journalism.
Charlie LeDuff
#70. Many people would no more think of entering journalism than the sewage business - which at least does us all some good.
Stephen Fry
#71. How we react to the tragedy of one small person accurately reflects our attitude towards a whole nationality, and increasing the numbers doesn't change much.
Anna Politkovskaya
#72. He reads every book in his home but it is not enough. The country boy craves stories. He devours every poem and fable in his school and library. Still he hungers. For stories.
Jennifer Lanthier
#73. A historian is not always a prophet facing backwards, but a journalist is always someone who afterwards knew everything beforehand.
Karl Kraus
#75. I think if there's some kind of crisis in news journalism ... a crisis of credibility, then it's been created by journalists. I'm empathetic, I understand it and I see it, but I'm not sympathetic about it. If you want people to think of journalism with higher regard then do better work.
Russell Crowe
#76. I think my journalism is for readers who are smart and know that most people are lying to them, or being patronizing.
David Weigel
#77. I started in business journalism from the outside, so when I started writing about markets and business, I was struck by the fact that markets seemed to work well even though people are often irrational, lack good information and are not perfect in the way they think about decisions.
James Surowiecki
#78. Al Gore has found a new job. He is going to teach journalism at Columbia University, which is ironic isn't it? The guy who did all the coke winds up going to the White House, the guy who didn't do coke goes to Columbia.
Jay Leno
#79. In the end, the discipline of verification is what separates journalism from entertainment, propaganda, fiction, or art.
Bill Kovach
#81. I realized that journalism was not just about regurgitating the facts but about figuring out the point. It wasn't enough to know the who, what, when, and where; you had to understand what it meant. And why it mattered.
Greg McKeown
#82. All things must be examined, debated, investigated without exception and without regard for anyone's feelings.
Denis Diderot
#83. One thing I learned as a journalist is that there is at least one disgruntled person in every workplace in America
and at least double that number with a conscience. Hard as they try, they simply can't turn their heads away from an injustice when they see one taking place.
Michael Moore
#84. TV journalism is a much more collaborative, horizontal business than print reporting. It has to be, because of the logistics. Anchors are wholly dependent on producers to do all the hustling.
Tina Brown
#85. [O]nce demagogy and falsehoods become routine, there isn't much for the political journalist to do except handicap the race and report on the candidate's mood.
George Packer
#86. I don't think a tough question is disrespectful.
Helen Thomas
#87. I started on the fringes of journalism as a cartoonist on The Daily Mail.
Humphrey Lyttelton
#88. Before journalism, I had worked doing medical aid work in conflict zones. Then, as a journalist, I had written about hospitals in war zones.
Sheri Fink
#89. Reading usually precedes writing. And the impulse to write is almost always fired by reading. Reading, the love of reading, is what makes you dream of becoming a writer.
Susan Sontag
#91. Journalism is a giant catapult set in motion by pigmy hatreds.
Honore De Balzac
#92. If journalism is good, it is controversial, by its nature.
Julian Assange
#93. (Feedback) People become addicted to it. That's why journalism is so popular, because you want to hear, every day, what people think of what you just wrote. I think a little patience on that front can be good, too.
Zadie Smith
#94. Journalism is straying into entertainment. The lines between serious news segments, news entertainment, and news comedy are blurring.
Drew Curtis
#97. I got into journalism not to be a journalist but to try to change American foreign policy. I'm a corny person. I was a dreamer predating my journalistic life, so I got into journalism as a means to try to change the world.
Samantha Power
#98. And after about two years, I realized that creative writing was not going to help you ace those biological tests. So I switched over to journalism. I didn't graduate with honors, but I did graduate on time and with some doing.
Bob Schieffer
#99. Carelessness is not fatal to journalism, nor are cliches, for the eye rests lightly on them. But what is intended to be read once can seldom be read more than once; a journalist has to accept the fact that his work, by its very todayness, is excluded from any share in tomorrow.
Cyril Connolly
#100. They don't think up questions like that on the basis of what might be true; they concoct the questions on the basis of what might be sensational if it just happened to be true.
Walter M. Miller Jr.
