Journalist Quotes
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As a journalist, or an anthropologist, the convention is that people are there for you to study, and they are your objects.
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There aren't enough good journalists. There are too many who really weren't groomed to be reporters and, as a result, some of the reporting is shallow.
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Let's give a big cuddly shout-out to Pat Healy, infant provocateur and amateur journalist at The New York Times. Keep it up, Pat - one day perhaps you'll learn something about how Broadway works, and maybe even understand it.
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If editors truly want to improve their byline ratio, they need to stop lamenting the fact that few women journalists send them cold pitches and start taking a hard look at their stable of regular contributors. How many women are on the masthead? How many women columnists or bloggers are on the payroll? This is how real change is going to happen.
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Journalists hold themselves apart, and above, the common person. They have rules designed to ensure their objectivity and impartiality.
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During my past career as a journalist, I relished writing obits and equally dreaded phoning relatives for the necessary facts. But to my surprise and great relief, they often wanted to talk - they wanted their recently deceased loved ones recorded in print.
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Journalists are usually quite jealous people, especially of intellectuals who are supposed to be in fashion.
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For the journalist, anything probable is gospel truth.
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Media bias in editorials and columns is one thing. Media fraud in reporting 'facts' in news stories is something else. ...The issue is not what various journalists or news organizations' editorial views are. The issue is the transformation of news reporting into ideological spin, along with self-serving taboos and outright fraud.
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I trained as a journalist in America where paying sources is frowned upon. Now I work in the U.K. where there is a more flexible attitude.
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You have to develop a conscience and if on top of that you have talent so much the better. But if you have talent without conscience, you are just one of many thousand journalists.
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I wish I was a great writer or a great journalist or a great scientist or a great artist; I'm not.
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I do feel haunted by some of the letters and the suffering people have endured. But I keep in mind that the people who write to me know that I am a journalist and an on-line advice columnist, not a social service professional.
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I can tell when I've met a bad journalist when they say, "I've met Madonna," or "I know Marilyn Manson." Because I haven't met anyone I've ever interviewed. I've sat down in the position of an interviewer, and they've sat down in the position of an artist trying to promote a product. We have no relationship. I'm able to ask them questions I'd never be allowed to ask them if we were casual friends. It's a completely constructed kind of situation.
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I couldn't imagine what it's like to be a journalist talking about music. You're left with empty descriptions; you probably have to make up a sort of weird cocktail of band influences and references to other music to get your point across.
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My job is to cover the hell out of the story, very aggressively. The real place to be courageous if you're a news organization is where you put your people to cover the story. It's making sure that you have people going to Baghdad. It's making sure that you figure out how to cover the war in Afghanistan. While the journalist in me completely stands with them, the editor of the New York Times in me thinks my job is to figure out what the hell happened and cover the hell out of it, and that's more important than some symbolic drawing on the front page.
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A journalist is a grumbler, a censurer, a giver of advice, a regent of sovereigns, a tutor of nations.
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It's easy to get young gay men to tickle each other, right? Let's come up with a challenge: Let's get heterosexual men. How do we do that? We make it a competition, because then it's not gay. That explains the antipathy behind the gay-journalist comment.
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Journalists who are devoted to strictly factual reporting take particular pleasure from satirical news outlets that have the liberty to laugh and even mock the hypocrisy that reporters and editors must simply observe without comment.
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The duty of a journalist is the duty of a watchman.
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I had an interview once with some German journalist - some horrible, ugly woman. It was in the early days after the communists - maybe a week after - and she wore a yellow sweater that was kind of see-through. She had huge tits and a huge black bra, and she said to me, "It's impolite; remove your glasses." I said, "Do I ask you to remove your bra?"
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If I do an interview with Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, am I required as a journalist to find a Holocaust denier?
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Churchill is the very type of a corrupt journalist. There is not a worse prostitute in politics. He himself has written that it'sunimaginable what can be done in war with the help of lies. He's an utterly amoral repulsive creature. I'm convinced that he has his place of refuge ready beyond the Atlantic. He obviously won't seek sanctuary in Canada. In Canada he'd be beaten up. He'll go to his friends the Yankees. As soon as this damnable winter is over, we'll remedy all that.
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Look how in societies today where Islam is dominant and prominent, how any non-Islamic person, whether it's a Christian or an apostate or a woman or a critical journalist, how they are treated. This is in a very bad way, often with the death penalty or imprisonment or all those kind of terrible things.
