Selected news quotes

1. We live in the midst of alarms; anxiety beclouds the future; we expect some new disaster with each newspaper we read.

2. I read the newspapers avidly. It is my one form of continuous fiction.

3. A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.

4. It's well-known that men and women are different but it keeps being re-discovered with great excitement.

5. We cannot make good news out of bad practice.

6. If radio news is to be regarded as a commodity, only acceptable when saleable, then I don't care what you call it - I say it isn't news.

7. I am frightened by the imbalance, the constant striving to reach the largest possible audience for everything; by the absence of a sustained study of the state of the nation.

8. A reporter is always concerned with tomorrow. There's nothing tangible of yesterday. All I can say I've done is agitate the air ten or fifteen minutes and then boom - it's gone.

9. News is what a chap who doesn't care much about anything wants to read. And it's only news until he's read it. After that it's dead.

10. I doubt there's ever been a true thing said on Fox. Maybe the weather report, maybe not.

11. You'd learn more about the world by lying on the couch and drinking gin out of a bottle than by watching the news.

12. A master passion is the love of news.

13. The news of the discovery spread fast all over the country, and inquisitive enquiries mingled with congratulations from this moment became the daily programme.

14. Why are we seeing George Bush on TV every two hours for nine or ten days at a time, like some kind of mutated Mr. Rogers clone? Something is dangerously wrong in any country where a monumentally-failed backwoods politician can scare our national TV networks so totally that they will give him anything he wants.

15. The fault I find with most American newspapers is not the absence of dissent. it is the absence of news. With a dozen or so honorable exceptions, most American newspapers carry very little news. Their main concern is advertising.

16. Europe has a press that stresses opinions; America a press, radio, and television that emphasize news.

17. Experience has taught me that those who give their time to the absorbing claims of what is called society, not having leisure to keep up a large acquaintance with the organs of opinion, remain much more ignorant of the general state either of the public mind, or of the active and instructed part of it, than a recluse who reads the newspapers need be.

18. My sense is that, when you look at what people such as former Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein have said over the years, you don't go with a story unless you have two independent sources to confirm it.

19. Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle.

20. Evil news fly faster still than good.

21. A foreign correspondent is someone who lives in foreign parts and corresponds, usually in the form of essays containing no new facts. Otherwise he's someone who flies around from hotel to hotel and thinks that the most interesting thing about any story is the fact that he has arrived to cover it.

22. The media. It sounds like a convention of spiritualists.

23. 'Terrorists don't take black hostages. Thats the truth. I have yet to see one of us on the news reading a hostage letter. Like, 'Uh...they is treatin us good. Uh we are chillin and shit. I'd like to give a shout out to Ray-Ray an Big Steve and uh, send some Newports!' '

24. The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western World. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity - much less dissent.

25. The maddest phenomenon in this wholly mad world - that the filming or wirelessing of an event, whether it is the Grand National or an attack in force on the Maginot Line, is held to be of more importance than the event itself.

26. My life [is] a series of Hollywood orgies and Kabbalah center brunches with the cast of Friends. At least that's what my handlers tell me. I'm actually too valuable to live my own life and spend most of my days in a vegetable crisper to remain fake news anchor fresh.

27. Everybody wrings their hands about Fox News. You know, 'fair and balanced? Why, that's snide!' Yeah, okay, maybe they're not fair and balanced, but CNN used to have the slogan 'You Can Depend on CNN'. Guess what? I watch it, no you can't. So what's the difference?

28. I have complete faith in the continued absurdity of whatever's going on.

29. People read the papers not in the hopes of learning something new, but in the expectation of being told what they already know. This is a form of living death. Its apotheosis is the daily poll in USA Today, which informs 'us' what percentage of a small number of unscientifically selected people called a toll number to vote on questions that cannot possibly be responded to with a 'yes' or 'no.'

30. Bah, the latest news, the latest news is not the last.

31. Newspapermen learn to call a murderer 'an alleged murderer' and the King of England 'the alleged King of England' to avoid libel suits.

32. It is better to be making the news than taking it; to be an actor rather than a critic.

33. 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. The pressure to compete, the fear somebody else will make the splash first, creates a frenzied environment in which a blizzard of information is presented and serious questions may not be raised.

34. The lowest form of popular culture-lack of information, misinformation, disinformation, and a contempt for the truth or the reality of most people's lives-has overrun real journalism. Today, ordinary Americans are being stuffed with garbage.

35. One of the basic troubles with radio and television news is that both instruments have grown up as an incompatible combination of show business, advertising and news. Each of the three is a rather bizarre and demanding profession. And when you get all three under one roof, the dust never settles. The top management of the networks with a few notable exceptions, has been trained in advertising, research, sales or show business. But by the nature of the coporate structure, they also make the final and crucial decisions having to do with news and public affairs. Frequently they have neither the time nor the competence to do this.

36. The newspapers print what the people want, and thus does the savage still swing his club and flourish his spear. [Pg. 142.]

37. Only in democratic countries is there the beginning of a suspicion that the old axioms about the press being the bulwark of liberty is something that affects the daily life of the people--that it is a living warning rather than an ancient wisecrack. A people that wants to be free must arm itself with a free press.

38. So much for Objective Journalism. Don't bother to look for it here - not under any byline of mine; or anyone else I can think of. With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms.

39. The newspapers! Sir, they are the most villainous - licentious - abominable - infernal - Not that I ever read them-no-I make it a rule never to look into a newspaper.

40. I give people the truth, unfiltered by rational argument. I call it the 'No Fact Zone'. Fox News, I hold a copyright on that term.

41. It is the one great weakness of journalism as a picture of our modern existence, that it must be a picture made up entirely of exceptions. We announce on flaring posters that a man has fallen off a scaffolding. We do not announce on flaring posters that a man has not fallen off a scaffolding. Yet this latter fact is fundamentally more exciting, as indicating that that moving tower of terror and mystery, a man, is still abroad upon the earth. That the man has not fallen off a scaffolding is really more sensational; and it is also some thousand times more common. But journalism cannot reasonably be expected thus to insist upon the permanent miracles. Busy editors cannot be expected to put on their posters, 'Mr. Wilkinson Still Safe,' or 'Mr. Jones, of Worthing, Not Dead Yet.' They cannot announce the happiness of mankind at all. They cannot describe all the forks that are not stolen, or all the marriages that are not judiciously dissolved. Hence the complex picture they give of life is of necessity fallacious; they can only represent what is unusual. However democratic they may be, they are only concerned with the minority.

42. I always turn to the sports page first. The sports page records people's accomplishments; the front page nothing but man's failures.

43. This, we have to say it, remember this is just a football game, no matter who wins or loses. An unspeakable tragedy, confirmed to us by ABC News in New York City: John Lennon, outside of his apartment building on the West Side of New York City, the most famous, perhaps, of all The Beatles, shot twice in the back, rushed to Roosevelt Hospital, dead ... on ... arrival.

44. Of which all Europe rings from side to side.

45. People don't actually read newspapers. They step into them every morning like a hot bath.

46. And now you know -- the rest of the story.

47. Canadian currency is also called the loonie. Now how can you take an economic crisis seriously? 'The loonie is down!' 'Oh how sad for you!'

48. The head-lines which do not head anything they simply replace something but they do not make anything. ~ Ch. 5

49. There it is, ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning.

50. Everything known before it happens; and headlines twice the size of the events.

51. Hello Americans, I'm Paul Harvey. You know what the news is -- in a minute, you're going to hear the rest of the story.

52. Thomas: Hey Victor! I'm sorry 'bout your dad. Victor: How'd you hear about it? Thomas: I heard it on the wind. I heard it from the birds. I felt it in the sunlight. And your mom was just in here cryin'.

53. Dear mother! Today a joyful notice. H. A. Lorentz has telegraphed me that the English expeditions have really proven the deflection of light at the sun.

54. And the parson made it his text that week, and he said likewise, That a lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies, That a lie which is all a lie may be met and fought with outright, But a lie which is part a truth is a harder matter to fight.

55. I believe I forgot to tell you I was made a Duke.

56. It was impossible to determine what he was saying, but I imagined he was telling all those present that they were nongs and maggots. I decided I quite liked watching the news with the sound off.

57. African-Americans watch the same news at night that ordinary Americans do.

58. I believed it, we published it. Official questions had been raised, but we stood by the story and her. Internal questions had been raised, but none about her other work. The reports were about the story not sounding right, being based on anonymous sources, and primarily about purported lies [about] her personal life -- [told by men reporters], two she had dated and one who felt in close competition with her.'

59. 'There were no Palestinians riding on planes on September 9th.'

60. 'All I gotta say about Ellion is thank god he's Cuban. Cause if he had been Hatian, you'd have never heard about his ass. If Ellion Gonzales was Ellion Mumoombo from Hati, they'd have pushed that little rubber tube back into the water. 'Sorry fella. All full.' '

61. All the young dudes Carry the news Boogaloo dudes Carry the news.

62. They're also a valuable supplement to the daily press, but like any new breakthrough, there is a dark side. (February 2005)

63. PlayStation 3 was released today, at least there's some good news for George Bush.

64. Most of my news, I get from the radio news stations. One of the stations' advertising lines is 'Give us 22 minutes, we'll give you the world.' In 22 minutes, they just have time for the headlines, so they can only really tell you what happened - which, by the way, is the news. They tell you how many people were killed in Iraq today, but they don't then bring on some Republican senator to explain to you how that's good. Or, on the contrary, they don't bring in a bunch of Democrats to tell you why it's bad. They just tell you what happened. That's the news. I am capable of analyzing my own news. What makes these people qualified to analyze my news for me? No matter what side they're on, I never agree with them.

65. Now here's another example of overprotection. Did you ever notice on the TV news, every time some guy with an AK-47 strolls onto a schoolyard and kills three or four kids and a couple of teachers, the next day, the next day, the school is overrun with counselors and psychiatrists and grief counselors and trauma therapists trying to help the children cope? Shit, when I was in school, someone came to our school and killed three or four of us, we went right on with our arithmetic. 35 classmates minus 4 equals 31. We were tough. We were tough.

66. Mickey Mouse's birthday being announced on the television news as if it's an actual event. I don't give a shit! If I cared about Mickey Mouse's birthday I'd have memorized it years ago. And I'd send him a card: 'Dear Mickey, Happy Birthday. Love, George.' But I don't. Why? I don't give a shit. Fuck Mickey Mouse! Fuck him in the asshole with a big rubber dick! And then break it off and beat him with the rest of it! I hope Mickey dies! I do - I hope he goddamn dies! I hope he gets a hold of some tainted cheese, and dies lonely and forgotten in the soiled baseport of a poor neighborhood, with his hand in Goofy's pants. No wonder no one takes this country seriously anymore - we waste valuable time informing our citizens of the age of an imaginary rodent!

67. There are less than a dozen independent newspapers in the whole country, and even that small number is dependent on advertisers and other things, and all these other things which revolve around money and profit make real independence impossible. No newspaper which is supporting one class of society is independent.

68. In all due respect, I'm not so sure it's credible to quote leading news organizations about - oh, never mind.

69. Wait, what did you just say? You're predicting $4 a gallon gasoline?. . . That's interesting. I hadn't heard that.

70. You can't read a newspaper if you can't read.

71. Journalism largely consists in saying 'Lord Jones Dead' to people who never knew Lord Jones was alive.

72. 'It's not that Good News doesn't sell. It's that Good News doesn't sell some people's agendas.'

73. Patriotism is as sickening today as it has ever been. I was watching the news before you came and there was a lot of coverage of Kosovo and the problems there. They showed footage of people burning an American flag. And the newscaster got all broken up and teary-eyed. He says, 'I guess [sob] I just feel something here, folks, when I see the American flag being burned.' And I said, 'You fucking asshole. Whatever happened to the news?'

74. The political situation starts to cool a little, but then we get the Ashcroft news and the market freaks out.

75. Texas is : 'trotting' journalism, history in a hurry.

76. People are always dying in the Times who don't seem to die in other papers, and they die at greater length and maybe even with a little more grace.

77. Here is what I believe is the paradigm that would be effective and what I would love to see, and you're going to laugh because Fox News is my model. What Fox has done is they've got a guy, Roger Ailes, who's passionate and has created a model for a 24-hour news station that makes money based on a point of view... Using Fox's model, find someone with the passion and the huevos to just lay it on the line - not in a partisan way, not in the pursuit of political power and political gain, but in the pursuit of credibility. In the pursuit of being a judge, an arbiter, and earning the trust of the audience over time as an oversight to the shenanigans of the political world.

78. [Robert Novak] apparently, they say, broke his hip. I think it's not the case. I believe his hip tried to escape.

79. 30 AD: Death penalty debate heats up after controversial execution of alleged 'Son of God'.

80. Things heard from a distance appear bigger than they are.

81. I have had enough of the Pop, the Pope who really held on, he really held on, he wasn't going anywhere, he was just fucking haging on, and the press could not wait for him to die. They were just waiting outside that whole saturday when he died, but he wouldn't die, all day they were just fucking waiting, like: 'He's not dead yet! But he might be when we come back from dis commercial!'

82. At the moment of Sputnik, the planet became a global theater in which there are no spectators but only actors. (1974)

83. If I read it in the newspapers, it's probably wrong. If I read it in the major news magazines, it's hopelessly wrong.

84. Hello, Americans, This is Paul Harvey. Standby for news.

85. (Paul, Jr.) -- 'Paul Harvey ... News & Comment. Brought to you by _____________________. Now ... Paul Harvey News.'

86. Now wash out your ears with this.

87. I get all the news I need from the weather report.

88. I mean you look in the paper and you see the bodies of mutilated people, and that's sexy. Controversy isn't saying something like 'Oh I've fucked Noel Gallagher' or something. Which I have.

89. Thanks for the newsflash, Chels.

90. [Television is] a really dreadful influence on all of us. Don't ever look at local television news again. It's all crap. There's no news, there's no information. It's negative, negative, negative. You look at that, and you think the world is coming to an end.

91. 'Great news! bloody news!' cried a newsman; The Devil said, 'Stop, let me see!' 'Great news? bloody news?' thought the Devil; 'The bloodier the better for me.'

92. Ladies and gentlemen, if you're going to Georgia, Jane Fonda and Ted Turner broke up. Yes they did. Jane found God and Ted found out it wasn't him.

93. Our media make crisis chatter out of news and fill our minds with anxious phantoms of the real thing - a summit in Helsinki, a treaty in Egypt, a constitutional crisis in India, a vote in the U.N., the financial collapse of New York. We can't avoid being politicized (a word as murky as the condition which it describes) because it is necessary after all to know what is going on. Worse yet, what is going on will not let us alone. Neither the facts nor the deformations, the insidious platitudes of the media (tormenting because the underlying realities are so large and so terrible), can be screened out. The study of literature itself is heavily 'politicized.'

94. Special Correspondence. I learn from a very high authority, whose name I am not at liberty to mention, (speaking to me at a place which I am not allowed to indicate and in a language which I am forbidden to use)--that Austria-Hungary is about to take a diplomatic step of the highest importance. What this step is, I am forbidden to say. But the consequences of it--which unfortunately I am pledged not to disclose--will be such as to effect results which I am not free to enumerate.

95. Il faut toujours en fait de nouvelles attendre le sacrement de la confirmation.

96. A fancifully fancyless medium of unvarnished news.

97. What is the use of reading the common news of the day, the tragic deaths and abuses of daily living, when for over half a lifetime we have known that they must have occurred just as they have occurred given the conditions that cause them? There is no light in it. It is trivial fill-gap. We know the plane will crash, the train be derailed. And we know why. No one cares, no one can care. We get the news and discount it, we are quite right in doing so. It is trivial. But the haunted news I get from some obscure patient's eyes is not trivial. It is profound.

98. 'Mrs. Sandoval,' Homer said swiftly, 'your son is dead. Maybe it's a mistake. Maybe it wasn't your son. Maybe it was somebody else. The telegram says it was Juan Domingo. But maybe the telegram is wrong.'

99. 'See through the news and the views that twist reality'

100. NASA article on lightning's effects on humans