Media

Being a reporter is as much a diagnosis as a job description. – Anna Quindlen

The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything. Except what is worth knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesman-like habits, supplies their demands. – Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism, 1891

If I had my choice I would kill every reporter in the world, but I am sure we would be getting reports from Hell before breakfast. – William Tecumseh Sherman

Journalists do not live by words alone, although sometimes they have to eat them. – Adlai E. Stevenson

I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers. – Attributed to Mahatma Gandhi

Some newspapers are fit only to line the bottom of bird cages. – Spiro T. Agnew

Power without responsibility — the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages. – Stanley Baldwin

The media network has its idols, but its principal idol is its own style which generates an aura of winning and leaves the rest in darkness. It recognizes neither pity nor pitilessness. – John Berger

Theres no business like show business. – Irving Berlin

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

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 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, the plural of mediocrity. – Jimmy Breslin

The only reason this country is different from any place else is that once in a great while, this huge, snobbish, generally untalented news reporting business stops covering stories of interest only to itself and actually serves the public. – Jimmy Breslin

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

If the sexual revolution has been a medical disaster, socially it has been a catastrophe. Why do the media not report and explore the tragic results of the sexual revolution? Because many are collaborators. – Patrick J. Buchanan

I think that in the minds of many, the press is being seen less and less as a neutral observer in the impeachment enterprise and more and more as participants, or even collaborators. On Medias Participation In Watergate – Patrick J. Buchanan

The most important service rendered by the press and the magazines is that of educating people to approach printed matter with distrust. – Samuel Butler

Mark Twain supposedly observed, Dont pick a fight with anyone who buys ink by the barrel and paper by the ton. Of course, today, he probably would have added, And hairspray by the gallon. – Thomas F. Calcagni

Weve uncovered some embarrassing ancestors in the not-too-distant past. Some horse thieves, and some people killed on Saturday nights. One of my relatives, unfortunately, was even in the newspaper business. – Jimmy Carter