Bill Kovach Quotes
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The journalist's first allegiance is to those who receive the work. Although there is no doubt that many owners and business managers of news organizations also have a deep allegiance to the public, that allegiance is necessarily alloyed with their concern for their own point of view or for the bottom line.
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In the end, the discipline of verification is what separates journalism from entertainment, propaganda, fiction, or art.
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After Vietnam and Watergate, and later the advent of twenty-four-hour cable news, journalism became noticeably more subjective and judgmental.18 Coverage was focused more on mediating what public people were saying than simply reporting it.
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News must also be about solving the problems that confront individuals and the community. There are lines between news and advocacy, but helping solve problems is different from advocacy.
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The credibility of the work depends on copy editors. I would argue with the copy desk, but I would thank them more.
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The press was to serve the governed, not the governors.
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If we're going to live as we are in a world of supply and demand, then journalists had better find a way to create a demand for good journalism.
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Journalism is the closest thing I have to a religion, because I believe deeply in the role and responsibility the journalists have to the people of a self-governing community.
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In the 1990s, as it began to feel the impact of cable news and syndicated infotainment programming, network evening newscasts became increasingly focused on tabloid crime and celebrity.
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In newspapers, as various studies have found, stories began to focus less on what candidates said and more on the tactical motives for their statements.
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Reality is that which, when you don’t believe it, doesn’t go away.