Journalism Quotes
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I believe journalism is coming to be regarded as quite a respectable occupation for gentlemen nowadays.
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I'm always very careful to make the distinction between music criticism and music journalism. A lot of people don't. But criticism doesn't require reporting. You can write criticism at home in your underwear. On the other hand, journalism takes legwork - you have to get out there and see things and talk to people.
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Nobody in media and journalism knows more about 'deep state' than I do.
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The whole notion of journalism being an institution whose fundamental purpose is to educate and inform and even, one might say, elevate, has altered under commercial pressure, perhaps, into a different kind of purpose, which is to divert and distract and entertain.
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Journalism is organized gossip.
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What journalism is really about-it's to monitor power and the centres of power.
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Writing in journalism teaches you to be very comfortable taking criticism, being edited, and rewriting.
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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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When journalism is treated as just another widget in a commercial enterprise, the focus isn't on truth, verification or public good, but productivity and output.
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A lot of people involved with celebrity journalism have interesting ideas about the people they want to write about going into the interview. Then as soon as they actually sit down with that person, they basically ask the questions they think journalists are supposed to ask, and they start viewing themselves almost as a peer of the subject. Like they're going to become friends. That's why most celebrity journalism is so terrible.
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[On journalists:] We are a noisy, imperfect lot, struggling to scribble what has been called the first draft of history.
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Theorists of journalism have long noted parallels to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle in physics: by reporting on something, one subtly but irrevocably changes it.
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I grew up in the traditional American newspaper world with a morning paper and an afternoon paper competing with each other beat by beat by beat. It was the most fun I've ever had. And it was great for journalism.
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Rule number one of journalism is that trying to get in between a journalist and a story he wants to tell is like trying to stop a herd of stampeding cattle.
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My only advice is, follow your dream and do whatever you like to do the most. I chose journalism because I wanted to be in the places where history was being made.
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London is one of the world's centres of Arab journalism and political activism. The failure of left and right, the establishment and its opposition, to mount principled arguments against clerical reaction has had global ramifications. Ideas minted in Britain – the notion that it is bigoted to oppose bigotry; 'Islamophobic' to oppose clerics whose first desire is to oppress Muslims – swirl out through the press and the net to lands where they can do real harm.
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The story of journalism, on a day-to-day basis, is the story of the interaction of reporters and officials
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I think my journalism is for readers who are smart and know that most people are lying to them, or being patronizing...
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I went into journalism in a grandiose way. I thought maybe I'd do a little journalism whilst I write the great novel of all time you see - one has to keep oneself afloat.
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I certainly don't mean to suggest that all investigative journalism prior to 9/11 in the US was praiseworthy. But there were more examples to which one could point, and there were at last some activist photographers who understood that getting information into the public sphere in spite of military censorship was a right and obligation within democracy. That strain in war journalism did nearly vanish during that time.
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When he let Kennedy use his column to send signals to Nikita Khrushchev, or lent his skill to Vandenberg to reinforce the anti-Soviet consensus in American diplomacy, he wasn't acting as a reporter but as a patriot. This urge may be a dereliction of duty in the journalist, but it is a sign of decency in the man. That the two impulses in journalism should so often be at odds — duty versus decency — tells us more about the trade than most of us care to know.
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Journalism is a character defect. I think most non-journalists would agree with this. It is life lived at a safe remove: standing off to one side of the parade as it passes, noting its flaws, offering glib and unworkable suggestions for its improvement. Every journalist must know that this is not, really, how a serious-minded person would choose to spend his days. Serious-minded people do things; a journalist chatters about the things serious-minded people do, and so, not coincidentally, avoids having to do them himself. A significant body of research indicates that non-journalists find us insufferable, perhaps for this reason.
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Journalism at its best and most effective is education. Apparently people would not learn for themselves, nor from others.
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Journalism is about covering important stories-with a pillow, until they stop moving.
