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JOURNALISM

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The liberty of the press is essential to
the security of freedom in a state.
--John Adams (1735—1826)
First VP and second President of the United States.
In the Massachusetts Bill of Rights [1780].

Thanks to my solid academic training, today I can write
hundreds of words on virtually any topic without possessing
a shred of information, which is how I got a good job in
journalism.
--Dave Barry (1947— )
American humorist.

Journalists say a thing that they know isn't
true, in the hope that if they keep on saying
it long enough it *will* be true.
--Arnold Bennett (1867—1931)
English novelist.
_The Title_ [1918]

When it comes to arrogance, power, and lack of accountability,
journalists are probably the only people on the planet who
make lawyers look good.
--Steven Brill,
epigraph for Bernard Goldberg, _Bias_

Journalism largely consists in saying 'Lord Jones
Dead' to people who never knew that Lord Jones
was alive.
--G.K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton (1874—1936)
English essayist, novelist, and poet.
_The Wisdom of Father Brown_ "The Purple Wig" [1914]

The press, like fire, is an excellent
servant, but a terrible master.
--James Fenimore Cooper (1789—1851)
American novelist.
_The American Democrat_ [1838]

When a dog bites a man that is not news,
but when a man bites a dog, that is news.
--Charles A(nderson) Dana (1819—1897)
American journalist who became a national
figure as editor of the New York "Sun."
"What is News?" in "Sun" [1882]

The press is ferocious. It forgives nothing, it only
hunts for mistakes. . . In my position anyone sane
would have left a long time ago.
(Contrasting British and foreign press reporting.)
--Diana, Princess of Wales (1961—1997)
Former wife of Charles, Prince of Wales.
In "Le Monde" [27 August 1997].

[Greener's Law:]
Never argue with a man who buys ink by the barrel.
--William I. Greener Jr. (b. 1925)
American publicist.
Quoted in "Wall Street Journal" [28 September 1978].

You furnish the pictures, and I'll furnish
the war.
--William Randolph Hearst (1863—1951)
American newspaper publisher.
In a cable to Frederic Remington, "New York
Journal" in Havana, Cuba, [March 1898].
Attributed, but denied by Hearst and never confirmed by Remington.

-

Perhaps an editor might begin a reformation
in some such way as this. Divide his paper
into four chapters, heading the 1st, Truths.
2d, Probabilities. 3d, Possibilities. 4th, Lies.
--Thomas Jefferson (1743—1826)
American statesman and president [1801—1809].
In a letter to John Norvell [11 June 1807].


Where the press is free, and every man
able to read, all is safe.
--Thomas Jefferson (1743—1826)
American statesman and president [1801—1809].
In a letter to Charles Yancey [6 January 1816].


I read no newspaper now but Ritchie's, and in
that chiefly the advertisements, for they contain
the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.
--Thomas Jefferson (1743—1826)
American statesman and president [1801—1809].
In a letter to Nathaniel Macon [12 January 1819].

yet note:

[The press is] the best instrument for enlightening
the mind of man, and improving him as a rational,
moral, and social being.
--Thomas Jefferson (1743—1826)
American statesman and president [1801—1809].
In a letter to A. Coray [31 October 1823].


During the course of this administration, and in order to disturb it,
the artillery of the press has been levied against us, charged with
whatsoever its licentiousness could devise or dare. These abuses
of an institution so important to freedom and science are deeply to
be regretted, inasmuch as they tend to lessen its usefulness and
sap its safety; they might, indeed, have been corrected by the
wholesome punishments reserved and provided by the laws of
the several States against falsehood and defamation; but public
duties more urgent press on the time of public servants, and the
offenders have therefore been left to find their punishment in the
public indignation.
--Thomas Jefferson (1743—1826)
American statesman and president [1801—1809].
In his second Inaugural Address.

-

Even though we never like it, and even though
we wish they didn't write it, and even though
we disapprove, there isn't any doubt at all that
we could not do the job at all in a free society
without a very, very active press.
--John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1917—1963)
American Democratic statesman, President of the U.S. [1961—1963].
President of the U.S. [1961-1963];
"Conversations with President Kennedy" [17 December 1962],
in _Public Papers_ [1962].

The press is a midden heap, full of bits and pieces
of things, some of them true, and maybe valuable,
but all of them fragments from which the citizen
must construct his own distorted portrait of reality.
I object to the idea that somehow the press, the
media, are going to provide the people with all
the answers.
--Lewis H. Lapham (1935— )
American syndicated newspaper columnist and author.
"Can the Press tell the Truth?" in "Harpers" [January 1985]

People everywhere confuse what they read
in newspapers with news.
--A. J. Liebling (1904—1963)
American syndicated newspaper columnist, author, and
staff writer for the New Yorker from 1935 until his death in 1963.
During World War II, he served as a correspondent for the magazine
in France, England, and North Africa.

There can be no higher law in journalism than
to tell the truth and shame the devil.
--Walter Lippmann (1889—1974)
American journalist.
"Journalism and the Higher Law" in
_Liberty and the News_ [1920]

The gallery in which the reporters sit has
become a fourth estate of the realm.
--Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800—1859)
English politician and historian.
"Hallam's Constitutional History" [1828]

Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to
notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally
indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on
people's vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust
and betraying them without remorse.
--Janet Malcolm (1934— )
American writer and journalist.
_The Journalist and the Murderer_, pt. I [1990]

The freedom of the press is one of the great
bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained
but by despotic governments.
--George Mason (1725—1792)
American statesman, wrote the Virginia Declaration of
Rights, from where the quote originates. [12 June 1776].

Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world
doesn't mean you are wiser than when it reached only to
the end of the bar.
--Edward R. Murrow [Egbert Roscoe Murrow]
(1908—1965)
American broadcaster and journalist.

Journalist: 'Hey Joe [Namath],' How did you
do in Basket Weaving at [the University of] Alabama?'
Namath: 'I flunked out, I switched to something
easier — journalism.'

-

There isn't another writer that has a worse reputation
for inaccuracy, indecency, for recklessness, for malice,
for hatred, for viciousness, for besmirching people's
characters and destroying them.
--Louis Nizer (1902—1994)
English-born American lawyer.
(On Westbrook Pegler, in his summation to the jury at Pegler's
trial for libel against Quentin Reynolds, 1953, quoted in Oliver
Pilat _Pegler: Angry Man of the Press_ [1963] - GBAQ.)

& see:

My hates have always occupied my mind much more
actively and have given greater spiritual satisfactions
than my friendships. . . .The wish to favor a friend is
not as active as the instinct to annoy some person or
institution I detest.
--Westbrook Pegler (1884—1969)
American Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and war correspondent.
(In his column "Fair Enough" quoted ibid.

-

All the news that's fit to print.
--Adolph S. Ochs (1858—1935)
Publisher of The New York Times.
Motto of the newspaper [1896].

Hot lead can be almost as effective coming
from a linotype as from a firearm.
--John O'Hara (1905—1970)
American novelist and short-story writer.

A cynical, mercenary, demagogic, corrupt press
will produce in time a people as base as itself.
--Joseph Pulitzer (1847—1911)
Hungarian-born American newpaper publisher.
Inscribed on the gateway to the Columbia
School of Journalism in New York City.

I write from the worm's-eye point of view.
--Ernie Pyle (1900—1945)
American journalist, war correspondent.
and winner of a 1944 Pulitzer.
_Here is Your War_ [1943]

It is very difficult to have a free, fair, and honest
press anywhere in the world. . . . As a rule, papers
are largely supported by advertising, and that
immediately gives the advertisers a certain hold
over the medium which they use.
--Eleanor Roosevelt (1884—1962)
American human rights activist, diplomat, and
wife of U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
_If You Ask Me_ [1946]

The men with the muck-rakes are often indispensible to the
well-being of society; but only if they know when to stop
raking the muck.
--Theodore Roosevelt (1858—1919)
American Republican statesman and President [1901—1909].
Speech in Washington [14 April 1906].

Exaggeration of every kind is as essential to
journalism as it is to dramatic art, for the
object of journalism is to make events go as
far as possible.
--Arthur Schopenhauer (1788—1860)
German philosopher.
"On Some Forms of Literature"

Comment is free, but facts are sacred.
--C.P. Scott (1846—1932)
British journalist.
In "Manchester Guardian" [5 May 1921].

An editor is someone who separates the
wheat from the chaff and prints the chaff.
--Adlai E. Stevenson (1900—1965)
American Democratic politician.

Junk journalism is the evidence of a society
that has got at least one thing right, that
there should be nobody with the power to
dictate where responsible journalism begins.
--Tom Stoppard [Tomas Straussler] (1937— )
Czech-born British playwright.
"Night and Day" (1978)

In order to enjoy the inestimable benefits that
the liberty of the press ensures, it is necessary
to submit to the inevitable evils that it creates.
--Alexis de Tocqueville (1805—1859)
French historian and politician.
_Democracy in America_ [1835]

-

There are laws to protect the freedom of the press's
speech, but none that are worth anything to protect
the people from the press.
--Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835—1910)
American humorist, novelist, journalist, and river pilot.
"License of the Press" [1873]


There are only two forces that can carry light to
all corners of the globe — the sun in the heavens
and the Associated Press.]
--Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835—1910)
American humorist, novelist, journalist, and river pilot.
In a speech at the annual dinner of the
Associated Press, New York City [18 September 1906].

-

Woman, wampum, and wrongdoing
are always news.
--Stanley Walker (1898—1962)
American journalist.
_City Editor_ [1938]

-

ERNEST: What is the difference between literature and journalism?
GILBERT: Oh! journalism is unreadable, and literature is not read.
--Oscar Wilde (1854—1900)
Anglo-Irish dramatist and poet.
_Intentions_ [1891] "The Critic as Artist"


There is much to be said in favor of modern journalism.
By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps
us in touch with the ignorance of the community.
--Oscar Wilde (1854—1900)
Anglo-Irish dramatist and poet.
_Intentions: The Critic as Artist_ [1891]


We are dominated by Journalism. In America the
President reigns for four years, and Journalism
governs for ever and ever.
--Oscar Wilde (1854—1900)
Anglo-Irish dramatist and poet.
_The Soul of Man Under Socialism_ [1891]

-

-

You cannot hope
to bribe or twist,
thank God! the
British journalist.

But, seeing what
the man will do
unbribed, there's
no occasion to.

--Humbert Wolfe (1885—1940)
Italian-born British poet, man of letters and civil servant.
"Over the Fire" bk. 1, _The Uncelestial City_ [1930]

-

Rock journalism is people who can't write interviewing
people who can't talk for people who can't read.
--Frank Zappa (1940—1993)
American rock musician and songwriter.
Quoted in "Chicago Tribune" [18 January 1978].

-

Chat-up Line:
I'm a freelance journalist. Would you
like a free lance?

The Three Rules of Journalism:
Make it brief.
Make it juicy.
Make it up.
--anon.

Reporter: But what did _you_ think
of the play, Mrs Lincoln?
--anon.

A journalist, thrilled over his dinner, asked the chef
for the recipe. Retorted the chef, "Sorry, we have the
same policy as you journalists, we never reveal our
sauce."


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