Journalism

Journalism is the discipline of gathering, writing and reporting news, and broadly it includes the process of editing and presenting the news articles. Journalism applies to various media, but is not limited to newspapers, magazines, radio, and television. While under pressure to be the first to publish its stories, each news media organization adheres to its own standards of accuracy, quality, and style — usually editing and proofreading its reports prior to publication. Many news organizations claim proud traditions of holding government officials and institutions accountable to the public, while media critics have raised questions on the accountability of the press. The word journalism is taken from the French journal which in turn comes from the Latin diurnal or daily. The Acta Diurna, a handwritten bulletin, was put up daily in the Forum, the main public square in ancient Rome, and was the world's first newspaper.

A

 * The liberty of the press is essential to the security of freedom in a state: it ought not, therefore, to be restrained in this commonwealth.
 * Massachusetts Constitution (1780) Text


 * Anonymous leaking is an ancient art and many websites publish documents from sources they cannot identify. What Wikileaks has done is to professionalise the operation. They have created a standard procedure for receiving, processing and publishing leaks.
 * Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists' (FAS) Project on Government Secrecy &mdash; reported in


 * My work as a journalist has been fundamental in my literary creations. Journalism taught me to know and love words, the tools of my trade, the material of my craft. Journalism taught me to search for truth and to try to be objective, how to capture the reader and to hold him firmly and not let him escape. It taught me to synthesize ideas and to be precise about events. And above all, it rid me of any fear of the blank page.
 * 1984 interview included in Conversations with Isabel Allende (1999), translated from the Spanish by Cola Franzen


 * Under established First Amendment law, prior restraints, if constitutional at all, are permissible only in the most extraordinary circumstances. In this case, you have court orders that effectively shut down a Web site that has been at the forefront of exposing corruption in governments and corporations around the world and enjoin anyone who reads the order from publishing or even linking to the documents.
 * David Ardia, director of Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society's Citizen Media Law Project (CMLP), commenting on Bank Julius Baer vs. Wikileaks &mdash; reported in {{cite news|title=Preserving Free Speech on the Internet: In a cyberlaw clinic, students help litigate matters of first impression |work=Harvard Law Bulletin |publisher= Harvard Law School|page= |date=Fall 2008 |url=http://www.law.harvard.edu/news/bulletin/2008/fall/feature_2-side1.php|accessdate=2009-03-04}


 * We are creating a space behind us that permits a form of journalism which lives up to the name that journalism has always tried to establish for itself. We are creating that space because we are taking on the criticism that comes from robust exposure of powerful groups.
 * Julian Assange quoted in Julian Assange, monk of the online age who thrives on intellectual battle, Carole Cadwalladr, The Guardian, (1 August 2010)

B

 * Experience has shown, contrary to general expectation, that newspapers are one of the best means of directing opinion—of quieting feverish movements—of causing the lies and artificial rumours, by which the enemies of the state may attempt to carry on their evil designs, to vanish. In these public papers, instruction may descend from the government to the people, or ascend from the people to the government: the greater the freedom allowed, the more correctly may a judgment be formed upon the course of opinion—with so much the greater certainty will it act.
 * Jeremy Bentham, Principles of Penal Law; part III, "Of Indirect Methods of Preventing Crimes"; ch. XIX, "Uses to be drawn from from the power of Instruction". Google Books


 * You go all over America and you see small papers that do really good jobs in their communities of reporting. The modern New York Times, the modern Washington Post, the modern Wall Street Journal are better papers than they were at the time of Watergate in most respects. But if you look at the rest of the field, … real news based on the best obtainable version of the truth was becoming less and less a commodity, less and less a real part of our journalistic institutions.
 * Carl Bernstein, interview in


 * REPORTER, n. A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with a tempest of words.
 * Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary (1911).


 * In the First Amendment the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government's power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the public. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.


 * It has been assumed that journalists are not permanently impacted by the events they cover. Exposure to the traumatic events they report on has been viewed as within their job description and a standard hazard of the profession, similar to an emergency room doctor or a firefighter. Many have viewed the journalists who cover death and destruction as unusually tough, somehow immune to the reverberating impact of the human suffering they witness. Until recently, journalists felt that if they publicly acknowledged that reporting experiences might affect them long-term, the journalist would be thought of as weak and less capable than his or her colleagues.
 * Elisa E. Bolton, “Traumatic events encountered by journalists“, National Center for PTSD, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.


 * Blocking access to the entire site in response to a few documents posted there completely disregards the public's right to know.
 * Ann Brick, attorney for American Civil Liberties Union, statement made before injunction liften in Bank Julius Baer vs. Wikileaks &mdash; reported in


 * Never forget that if you don't hit a newspaper reader between the eyes with your first sentence, there is no need of writing a second one.
 * Arthur Brisbane (c. 1900) quoted in


 * Time was when men of Horse Watson’s profession typically never slept sober, and died with their livers eroded. It must have been fun to watch the literate swashbucklers make fools of themselves in the frontier saloons, indulging in horsewhippings and shoot-outs with rival journalists and their partisans. But who stopped to think what it was to have the power of words and publication, to discover that an entire town and territory would judge, condemn, act, reprieve and glorify because of something you had slugged together the night before? Because of something you had handset into type, smudging your fingertips with metal poisons that inexorably began their journey through your bloodstream? For the sake of the power, you turned your liver and kidneys into spongy, irascible masses; you tainted the tissue of your brain with heavy metal ions until it became a house haunted by stumbling visions. Alcohol would temporarily overcome the effect. So you became an alcoholic, and purchased sanity one day at a time, and made a spectacle of yourself. It was neither funny nor tragic in the end—it was simply a fact of life that operated more slowly on the mediocre, because the mediocre could turn themselves off and go to sleep whether they had done the night’s job to their own satisfaction or not.
 * Algis Budrys, Michaelmas (1977), ISBN 0-425-03812-2, Chapter 3 (pp. 36-37)


 * Journalism may not dare too much. It can be gently humorous and ironic, very lightly touched by idiosyncrasy, but it must not repel readers by digging too deeply. This is especially true of its approach to language: the conventions are not questioned.
 * Anthony Burgess, A Mouthful of Air: Language and Languages, Especially English (1992).


 * A would-be satirist, a hired buffoon, A monthly scribbler of some low lampoon, Condemn'd to drudge, the meanest of the mean, And furbish falsehoods for a magazine.
 * Lord Byron, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809), line 975.

C

 * As mainstream news outlets become increasingly complacent, and even supportive of pro-war policies, it becomes more essential that anti-war voices, and anti-war journalists in particular, resist the attempt by the United States to set the precedent that the act of publishing war crimes is a punishable offense.
 * Fate Of Anti-War Journalism Lies in Upcoming Assange Hearings, Sam Carliner, October 22, 2021


 * In contrast to publications that take such a careless or outright supportive stance on the irreparable harm of U.S. foreign policy are WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange. Following his view that “if wars can be started with lies, they can be stopped by truth,” Assange has published some of the most vital information on U.S. foreign policy of the 21st century with perfect accuracy.
 * Fate Of Anti-War Journalism Lies in Upcoming Assange Hearings, Sam Carliner, October 22, 2021


 * Despite the many problems with the mainstream press, journalism as an institution remains one of the most effective methods of resisting, and at times, ending wars. Even those distrustful of the press should be willing to oppose attacks on the right to a free press when such attacks occur. It is the guarantee of press freedom that enables anti-war reporting to make its way into the mainstream at times, shifting people's understanding of what their government does.
 * Fate Of Anti-War Journalism Lies in Upcoming Assange Hearings, Sam Carliner, October 22, 2021


 * A Fourth Estate, of Able Editors, springs up.
 * Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution, A History (1837), Part I, Book VI, Chapter 5.


 * Great is journalism. Is not every able editor a ruler of the world, being the persuader of it?
 * Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution, A History (1837), Part II, Book I, Chapter 4.


 * Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters' Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all. It is not a figure of speech, or a witty saying; it is a literal fact, - very momentous to us in these times.


 * The journalists would appear to be in an almost literal sense the priests of the modern world... the corruption of the priesthood occurred at the precise moment in which it changed from a minority organised to impart knowledge into a minority organised to withhold it. The great danger of decadence in journalism is almost exactly the same. Journalism possesses in itself the potentiality of becoming one of the most frightful monstrosities and delusions that have ever cursed mankind. This horrible transformation will occur at the exact instant at which journalists realise that they can become an aristocracy.
 * G. K. Chesterton, "The New Priests" (1901)


 * Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers another.
 * G. K. Chesterton, "On the Cryptic and the Elliptic", All Things Considered (1908)


 * I know that journalism largely consists in saying 'Lord Jones Dead' to people who never knew Lord Jones was alive.
 * G. K. Chesterton, "The Purple Wig", The Wisdom of Father Brown (1914)


 * 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 complete 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.
 * G. K. Chesterton, The Ball and the Cross (1909), Chapter IV. A Discussion at Dawn (second paragraph)
 * If Wikileaks were a print publication, the injunction would be unthinkable. … What distinguishes this case is that the allegedly intolerable materials were published on the Internet instead of on paper. But that's a poor reason to abandon the principles that protect those who want to publish -- as well as those who want to read. Censorship is censorship, no matter the medium.


 * The duty of journalists is to tell the truth. Journalism means you go back to the actual facts, you look at the documents, you discover what the record is, and you report it that way.
 * Noam Chomsky interview in


 * The real purpose of state secrecy is to enable governments to establish their own self-interested and often mendacious version of the truth by the careful selection of “facts” to be passed on to the public. They feel enraged by any revelation of what they really know, or by any alternative source of information. Such threats to their control of the news agenda must be suppressed where possible and, where not, those responsible must be pursued and punished.Revealing important information about the Yemen war – in which at least 70,000 people have been killed – is the reason why the US government is persecuting both Assange and Zikry.
 * Patrick Cockburn, Why the US is Persecuting Assange? CounterPunch (4 June 2019)


 * I was in Kabul a decade ago when WikiLeaks released a massive tranche of US government documents about the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen. On the day of the release, I was arranging by phone to meet an American official... He was intensely interested and asked me what was known about the degree of classification of the files. When I told him, he said in a relieved tone: “No real secrets, then.”
 * Patrick Cockburn, Why the US is Persecuting Assange? CounterPunch (4 June 2019)


 * We welcome everyone here to the hearing. In the Texas v. Johnson case in 1989, the Supreme Court set forth one  of the fundamental principles of our democracy. That is, that  if there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or  disagreeable. That was Justice William Brennan.
 * Congressman John Conyers in U.S. Congress House Hearing: Espionage Act and the Legal and Constitutional Issue Raised by Wikileaks. Hearing Before the Committee on the Judiciary House of Representatives, One Hundred Eleventh Congress, Second Session, (16 December 2010).  C-SPAN recording


 * ... whatever one thinks about this controversy, it is clear that prosecuting WikiLeaks would raise the most fundamental questions about freedom of speech about who is a journalist and about what the public can know about the actions of their own government. Indeed, while there's agreement that sometimes secrecy is necessary, the real problem today is not too little secrecy, but too much secrecy.
 * Congressman John Conyers in U.S. Congress House Hearing: Espionage Act and the Legal and Constitutional Issue Raised by Wikileaks. Hearing Before the Committee on the Judiciary House of Representatives, One Hundred Eleventh Congress, Second Session, (16 December 2010).  [https://www.c-span.org/video/?297115-1/wikileaksthe-espionage-act-constitution C-SPAN


 * Media carries with it a credibility that is totally undeserved. You have all experienced this. [...] Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. [...] You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. [...] You read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.
 * Michael Crichton, "Why Speculate?" (speech at the International Leadership Forum, La Jolla, California, 26 April 2002). Archived from the original on 8 August 2019. Retrieved 3 May 2022.

D

 * I don't really understand why journalism has to be so nasty, so sarcastic and intrusive.
 * Paul Daniels, quoted in


 * Th' newspaper does ivrything f'r us. It runs th' polis foorce an' th' banks, commands th' milishy, controls th' ligislachure, baptizes th' young, marries th' foolish, comforts th' afflicted, afflicts th' comfortable, buries th' dead an' roasts thim aftherward. They ain't annything it don't turn its hand to fr'm explainin' th' docthrine iv thransubstantiation to composin' saleratus biskit.
 * Finley Peter Dunne, "Newspaper Publicity" in Observations by Mr. Dooley (1902)

E

 * Journalism is organised gossip.
 * Edward Eggleston

F

 * “Did she believe you?” “She’s an excellent journalist—of course not.”
 * Jasper Fforde, One of Our Thursdays is Missing (2011), ISBN 978-0-670-02252-6, p. 205


 * I suppose, in the end, we journalists try - or should try - to be the first impartial witnesses of history. If we have any reason for our existence, the least must be our ability to report history as it happens so that no one can say: 'We didn't know - no one told us.'


 * Today's serious nonfiction writer is important to society because from a solid background of social sciences, combined with the journalistic skills of a reporter, one moves beyond the reporter function to the front edge of our emerging society.
 * Betty Friedan (May 1978) 30th Anniversary Journal, American Society of Journalists and Authors, quoted in

G

 * When journalese was at its rifest the Ministry of Health was established - possibly a coincidence.
 * John Galsworthy (July 1924) On Expression, Presidential Address to the English Association, p. 12. &mdash; Quote reproduced in


 * Journalism is not a profession ... at its heart, it's just a craft. And that means that it can be practiced by anyone who is sensible and intelligent and thoughtful and curious ...
 * Sue Gardner, "Interview with Sue Gardner of the Wikimedia Foundation", Wikinews; October 24, 2007.


 * Grassroots journalism is part of the wider phenomenon of citizen-generated media - of a global conversation that is growing in strength, complexity, and power. When people can express themselves, they will. When they can do so with powerful yet inexpensive tools, they take to the new-media realm quickly. When they can reach a potentially global audience, they literally can change the world.


 * While journalists should view Wikileaks with some skepticism, it cannot be ignored. Welcome to the brave new world of investigative reporting.


 * Going to where the silence is. That is the responsibility of a journalist: giving a voice to those who have been forgotten, forsaken, and beaten down by the powerful....We must build a trickle-up media that reflects the true character of this country and its people.
 * Amy Goodman, in The Exception to the Rulers written with David Goodman (2004)


 * Journalists are supposed to be the check and balance on power, not win popularity contests.
 * Amy Goodman, Introduction, Democracy Now!: Twenty Years Covering the Movements Changing America (2016)


 * The national religion in the United States is worship of all things military. And journalists are its high priests.
 * Glenn Greenwald (1967), interview with Democracy Now! (November 14, 2012). Glenn Greenwald: While Petraeus Had Affair with Biographer, Corporate Media Had Affair with Petraeus. Retrieved on 2012-11-15.


 * The destruction of media offices and the killing of a journalist in Gaza are extremely concerning. Journalists must be able to carry out their essential work, including in conflict zones, without fear of attack and harassment. They must be protected and respected... Even wars have rules. First and foremost, civilians must be protected... Indiscriminate attacks, and attacks against civilians and civilian property, are violations of the laws of war...
 * Antonio Guterres, Secretary-General’s Remarks to the General Assembly Meeting on the Situation in the Middle East and Palestine, United Nations Secretary-General, Statements, (20 May 2021)

H

 * Editor: a person employed by a newspaper, whose business it is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed.
 * Elbert Hubbard (1914) The Roycroft Dictionary of Epigrams &mdash; quoted in

I

 * …American sociologist George Yancey in his 2015 book “Hostile Environment” focused on American media bias against Christianity and conservative religion in general and found its roots in the fact that mainline U.S. journalism is a self-perpetuating caste. If you are an Evangelical Christian or do not agree with the prevailing liberal and secular ideology, particularly on moral matters, you will be thrown out of the first interview when you will try to be hired by one of the mainline media.
 * Massimo Introvigne, "The Anti-Religious, Anti-Cult, and Anti-Tai-Ji-Men Bias in the Media", Bitter Winter (May 2024)

J

 * One's right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.


 * The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them.
 * Thomas Jefferson, letter to Colonel Edward Carrington (16 January 1787) Lipscomb & Bergh ed. 6:57.


 * To your request of my opinion of the manner in which a newspaper should be conducted, so as to be most useful, I should answer, "by restraining it to true facts & sound principles only." Yet I fear such a paper would find few subscribers. It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more completely deprive the nation of its benefits, than is done by its abandoned prostitution to falsehood. Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day. . . . I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false.
 * Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Norvell (11 June 1807). Original and transcript


 * I deplore with you the putrid state into which our newspapers have passed, and the malignity, the vulgarity, & mendacious spirit of those who write for them: and I enclose you a recent sample, the production of a New England judge, as a proof of the abyss of degradation into which we are fallen. These ordures are rapidly depraving the public taste and lessening its relish for sound food. As vehicles of information and a curb on our functionaries, they have rendered themselves useless by forfeiting all title to belief. That this has in a great degree been produced by the violence and malignity of party spirit I agree with you...
 * Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Walter Jones (2 January 1814).


 * They lied about it! The enemy boils the ocean, cooks the sixth fleet and every man, woman and child within fifty miles of a shoreline - you could expect some coverage. What did they report? Minor soil erosion in the Florida Keys. They boiled the ocean, woman!
 * Arthur M. Jolly in the play After It's All Over, Original Works Press (2009).


 * What people outside do not appreciate is that a newspaper is like a soufflé, prepared in a hurry for immediate consumption. This of course is why whenever you read a newspaper account of some event of which you have personal knowledge it is nearly always inadequate or inaccurate. Journalists are as aware as anyone of this defect; it is simply that if the information is to reach as many readers as possible, something less than perfection has often to be accepted.
 * David E. H. Jones, New Scientist, Vol. 26 (1965).

K

 * They were professional tantrum artists who only knew one thing: how to bludgeon the West to death with identity politics. And now, with the most arousing irony I have been witness to in years, we can safely say, "#TimesUp".
 * Raheem Kassam, "No, I Don't Feel Sorry For Journalists Who Have Lost Their Jobs — I'm Bloody Thrilled", Daily Caller, January 28, 2019


 * My problem, and our problem — I think this is a view that's pretty widely shared in the news business — is, you know, we, and I don't just mean The Times, are too ready to publish the blandest of quotes, or, sometimes, the idlest of gossip and innuendo, behind a cover of anonymity. I think it cheapens the currency of source protection.
 * Bill Keller, The New York Times executive editor, about anonymous sources (May 13, 2005) in On the Media.

L

 * Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever lays one down without a feeling of disappointment.
 * Charles Lamb (1833) "On Books and Reading", The Last Essays of Elia &mdash; Quote reproduced in


 * The Seven Subjects of Sensational Journalism: crime, scandal, speculative science, insanity, superstitions such as numerology, monsters, and millionaires.
 * Fritz Leiber, A Rite of Spring (1977), in Terry Carr (ed.), Universe 7, p. 26


 * As to [General Douglas] Macarthur, I don't feel in a position to have clear opinions about anyone I know only from newspapers. You see, whenever they deal with anyone (or anything) I know myself, I find they're always a mass of lies & misunderstandings: so I conclude they're no better in the places where I don't know.
 * C. S. Lewis, letter to Mrs. Mary Van Deusen, April 30, 1951. Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, vol. 3, "Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy", 1950-1963. p. 114.

M

 * The Web sites of interest groups generally advance the cause of journalganda, in that everything is presented through the filter of the interest group. […] It is an odd, unreal world but very important because it's where partisans can go to have their thoughts re-enforced. There's nothing like journalganda to make you feel absolutely certain you are correct, no matter what your position. […] Real journalism can always be identified by the way it makes normal people sometimes feel very uncomfortable about the world.
 * Charles M. Madigan (October 25, 2005) "The problem with today's 'journalism'", Chicago Tribune.


 * Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people's vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse. Like the credulous widow who wakes up one day to find the charming young man and all her savings gone, so the consenting subject of a piece of nonfiction writing learns—when the article or book appears—his hard lesson. Journalists justify their treachery in various ways according to their temperaments. The more pompous talk about freedom of speech and "the public's right to know"; the least talented talk about Art; the seemliest murmur about earning a living.
 * Janet Malcolm, The Journalist and the Murderer (1990). New York: Knopf, p. 3 (the opening paragraph of the book).


 * In our society, the journalist ranks with the philantropist as a person who has something extremely valuable to dispense (his currency is the strangely intoxicating substance called publicity), and who is consequently treated with a deference quite out of proportion to his merits as a person. There are very few people in this country who do not regard with rapture the prospect of being written about or interviewed on a radio or television program.
 * Janet Malcolm, The Journalist and the Murderer (1990). New York: Knopf, p. 58.


 * I have come to think […] the character called "I" in a work of journalism […] is unlike all the journalist's other characters in that he forms the exception to the rule that nothing may be invented: the "I" character in journalism is almost pure invention. Unlike the "I" of autobiography, who is meant to be seen as a representation of the writer, the "I" of journalism is connected to the writer only in a tenuous way—the way, say, that Superman is connected to Clark Kent. The journalistic "I" is an overreliable narrator, a functionary to whom crucial tasks of narration and argument and tone have been entrusted, an ad hoc creation, like the chorus of Greek tragedy. He is an emblematic figure, an embodiment of the idea of the dispassionate observer of life. Nevertheless, readers who readily accept the idea that the narrator in a work of fiction is not the same person as the author of the book will stubbornly resist the idea of the invented "I" of journalism; and even among journalists, there are those who have trouble sorting themselves out from the Supermen of their texts.
 * Janet Malcolm, The Journalist and the Murderer (1990). New York: Knopf, pp. 159–160.


 * The moral ambiguity of journalism lies not in its texts but in the relationships out of which they arise—relationships that are invariably and inescapably lopsided. The "good" characters in a piece of journalism are no less a product of the writer's unholy power over another person than are the "bad" ones.[…] The fact that the subject may be trying to manipulate the journalist—and none but the most otherworldly of subjects is above at least some manipulativeness—does not offset the journalist's own sins against the libertarian spirit.[…] There is an infinite variety of ways in which journalists struggle with the moral impasse[…]. The wisest know that the best they can do […] is still not good enough. The not so wise, in their accustomed manner, choose to believe there is no problem and that they have solved it.
 * Janet Malcolm, The Journalist and the Murderer (1990). New York: Knopf, pp. 162-163. (The last sentence is the last sentence of the book.)


 * Whistleblowers are essential to good journalism. They allow reporters to get behind... the walls of secrecy built up by officials and press officers. The whistleblowers reveal abuses and wrongdoing within governments, companies, the military, intelligence agencies. These whistleblowers should be rewarded for their courage; instead, too often they end up facing prosecution or jail.
 * Ewen MacAskill in Free Julian Assange: Snowden, Varoufakis, Corbyn & Tariq Ali Speak Out Ahead of Extradition Hearing, Democracy Now!, October 25, 2021


 * If Julian is to be prosecuted, then there’s a equally good case for the editor and journalists in The Guardian... New York Times, Der Spiegel, El País, La República and all the other organizations involved in this coverage being prosecuted, too.
 * Ewen MacAskill in Free Julian Assange: Snowden, Varoufakis, Corbyn & Tariq Ali Speak Out Ahead of Extradition Hearing, Democracy Now!, October 25, 2021


 * As Michael Schudson pointed out in “Discovering the News” (1978), the notion that good journalism is “objective”—that is, nonpartisan and unopinionated—emerged only around the start of the twentieth century. Schudson thought that it arose as a response to growing skepticism about the whole idea of stable and reliable truths. The standard of objectivity, as he put it, “was not the final expression of a belief in facts but the assertion of a method designed for a world in which even facts could not be trusted. . . . Journalists came to believe in objectivity, to the extent that they did, because they wanted to, needed to, were forced by ordinary human aspiration to seek escape from their own deep convictions of doubt and drift.” In other words, objectivity was a problematic concept from the start... Lippmann’s argument was that journalism is not a profession. You don’t need a license or an academic credential to practice the trade. All sorts of people call themselves journalists. Are all of them providing the public with reliable and disinterested news goods?
 * Louis Menand, “When Americans Lost Faith in the News”, The New Yorker, (January 30, 2023)


 * Between 1945 and 1975, there was one woman in the Cabinet and one Black person. Each served for two years. On the press side, it was worse. Female and Black reporters were programmatically excluded. They had no entrée to certain press functions, and editors did not assign women to cover government affairs. Flat-out racism and sexism persisted much longer than seems believable today. The two main social organizations for Washington journalists were the Gridiron Club (founded in 1885) and the National Press Club (founded in 1908). The Gridiron invited members’ wives to a dinner in 1896, but a skit lampooning the suffrage movement did not go over well, and women were not allowed back until 1972. Into the nineteen-fifties, members performed in blackface for entertainment at Gridiron dinners. McGarr reports that the club’s signature tune was “The Watermelon Song,” sung in dialect. The National Press Club did not have a Black member until 1955, which was the first year that women were allowed to attend luncheons where members were briefed by officials. The women had to sit in the balcony and were not allowed to ask questions. The National Press Club did not have a woman member until 1971. The Washington Post hired its first Black reporter in 1951. He was assigned his own bathroom, and left the paper after two years. (McGarr says that the Post did not hire another Black reporter until 1972, but that’s incorrect: the paper hired Dorothy Gilliam in 1961, and Jack White in 1968.) Far into the civil-rights movement, the Times had very few Black reporters. The record of general-interest magazines, including this one, was hardly better.
 * Louis Menand, “When Americans Lost Faith in the News”, The New Yorker, (January 30, 2023)


 * The power of the press, such as it is, is like the power of academic scholars, scientific researchers, and Supreme Court Justices. It is not backed by force. It rests on faith: the belief that these are groups of people dedicated to pursuing the truth without fear or favor. Once they disclaim that function, they will be perceived in the way everyone else is now perceived, as spinning for gain or status.
 * Louis Menand, “When Americans Lost Faith in the News”, The New Yorker, (January 30, 2023)


 * Since there is no such thing as ideological truth, it follows that to the extent a reporter is a liberal reporter or a conservative reporter, or a Democratic or Communist or Republican reporter, he is no reporter at all.
 * H. L. Mencken (1937), quoted in Alistair Cooke, Memories of the Great and Good, 1999, p. 224.


 * The newspapers were beginning to get on to Jaycie now. They had ignored her at first. Put things down to anyone and everything else. After all, it was a bit awkward for them having to do with a woman who was beautiful but apparently had no sex life; they didn’t know what to try and smear her with.
 * Naomi Mitchison, “Mary and Joe” in Harry Harrison (ed.) Nova 1, p. 163.


 * Journalists who make mistakes get sued for libel; historians who make mistakes get to publish a revised edition.
 * Bill Moyers, "The Big Story", speech to the Texas State Historical Association, 7 March 1997, Moyers on Democracy (2008), p. 131.


 * The freedom of speech and of the press, which are secured by the First Amendment against abridgment by the United States, are among the fundamental personal rights and liberties which are secured to all persons by the Fourteenth Amendment against abridgment by a state. The safeguarding of these rights to the ends that men may speak as they think on matters vital to them and that falsehoods may be exposed through the processes of education and discussion is essential to free government. Those who won our independence had confidence in the power of free and fearless reasoning and communication of ideas to discover and spread political and economic truth.

O

 * The fat Russian agent was cornering all the foreign refugees in turn and explaining plausibly that this whole affair was an Anarchist plot. I watched him with some interest, for it was the first time that I had seen a person whose profession was telling lies—unless one counts journalists.
 * George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia (1938)


 * Early in life I had noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper, but in Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as the heroes of imaginary victories; and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that had never happened. I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various "party lines".
 * George Orwell, Looking Back on the Spanish War (1943)

P

 * In a world where everyone is a publisher, no one is an editor and that is the danger we face today.
 * Scott Pelley in a speech at Quinnipiac University on 10 May 2013.


 * It is not enough for journalists to see themselves as mere messengers without understanding the hidden agendas of the message and the myths that surround it.
 * John Pilger, 'Hidden Agendas', 1998
 * Secretive power loathes journalists who do their job: who push back screens, peer behind façades, lift rocks. Opprobrium from on high is their badge of honour.
 * We journalists... have to be brave enough to defy those who seek our collusion in selling their latest bloody adventure in someone else's country... That means always challenging the official story, however patriotic that story may appear, however seductive and insidious it is. For propaganda relies on us in the media to aim its deceptions not at a far away country but at you at home... In this age of endless imperial war, the lives of countless men, women and children depend on the truth or their blood is on us... Those whose job it is to keep the record straight ought to be the voice of people, not power.
 * John Pilger, The War You Don't See, ITV1 (UK), (14 December 2010)


 * Why is WikiLeaks a landmark in journalism? Because its revelations have told us, with 100 per cent accuracy, how and why much of the world is divided and run.
 * John Pilger, in New Cold War & looming threats, Frontline, India (21 December 2018)


 * Journalists can help people by telling the truth, or by as much truth as they can find, and acting not as agents of governments, of power, but of people. That is real journalism. The rest is specious and false.
 * John Pilger, quoted in Real journalists act as agents of people, not power, Daily Star (Bangladesh)   (16 January 2019)


 * To quote, without verifiable evidence, "western intelligence sources" is never journalism; it is almost always propaganda. I learned that as a reporter. The cold war drum beat of the BBC and others is leading us to a world war.
 * John Pilger, Twitter (22 July 2020)

R

 * A news sense is really a sense of what is important, what is vital, what has color and life — what people are interested in. That's journalism.
 * Burton Rascoe, as quoted in Useful Quotations : A Cyclopedia of Quotations (1933) edited by Tryon Edwards, C. N. Catrevas, and Jonathan Edwards


 * Controversy? You can't be any kind of reporter worthy of the name and avoid controversy completely. You can't be a good reporter and not be fairly regularly involved in some kind of controversy. And I don't think you can be a great reporter and avoid controversy very often, because one of the roles a good journalist plays is to tell the tough truths as well as the easy truths. And the tough truths will lead you to controversy, and even a search for the tough truths will cost you something. Please don't make this play or read as any complaint, it's trying to explain this goes with the territory if you're a journalist of integrity. That if you start out a journalist or if you reach a point in journalism where you say, "Listen, I'm just not going not touch anything that could possibly be controversial," then you ought to get out.
 * Dan Rather, interview in


 * Good journalism questions the land of a thousand [forbidden topics] even at the risk of uncanny and disturbing findings. …Now, journalists are neither detectives nor spiritual preachers. It is enough when they do their job properly. But there is always also an investigative side to the journalistic profession, as well as an ethical one. Journalists are not detectives but through their job they can perform some measure of investigation; journalists are not detectives, but they can provide facts that detectives may somewhat use. Journalists are not even spiritual guides, but, properly doing their job, they can offer occasions and clues that can also help to somewhat nourish the soul of their readers. Let’s all wisely stay away from preaching journalism, but good journalists can at least avoid poisoning their own as well as their readers’ souls.
 * Marco Respinti, "China’s Human Harvest and Illegal Organ Trade: Publish or Perish?", Bitter Winter


 * What a monstrous thing that a University should teach journalism! I thought that was only done at Oxford. This respect for the filthy multitude is ruining civilisation.
 * Bertrand Russell, in a letter to Lucy Martin Donnely (July 6, 1902).

S

 * But I'll report it Where senators shall mingle tears with smiles.
 * William Shakespeare, Coriolanus (c. 1607-08), Act I, scene 9, line 2.


 * Report me and my cause aright To the unsatisfied.
 * William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1600-02), Act V, scene 2, line 350.


 * Bring me no more reports.
 * William Shakespeare, Macbeth (1605), Act V, scene 3, line 1.


 * I don't think it has ever been as scary as it is right now. Because it seems that all journalists are under threat
 * Najib Sharifi head of the Afghan Journalists Safety Committee, in an interview with DW posted to 2020: Dozens of journalists killed in targeted attacks 2020


 * I still believe that if your aim is to change the world, journalism is a more immediate short-term weapon.
 * Tom Stoppard, Tom Stoppard in Conversation (1994), p. 196, University of Michigan Press, Paul Delaney, ed.


 * I don't want to be part of the story. I want to be an anonymous, quiet onlooker who tries to work out what the hell is happening - its not easy - and then tells other people about it. I don't like being a figure in the thing.
 * John Simpson, interview in


 * The Press is at once the eye and the ear and the tongue of the people. It is the visible speech, if not the voice, of the democracy. It is the phonograph of the world.
 * William Thomas Stead (May 1886) "Government by Journalism", Contemporary Review.


 * Journalism (definition): The art, or science, of representing life as a series of clichés.
 * Richard Summerbell,

T

 * To be completely cured of newspapers, spend a year reading the previous week’s newspapers.
 * Nassim N. Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 21


 * I've always had standards about writing well. There is art in this business. There is potentially great art.
 * Gay Talese (September 14, 2006) &mdash; reported in


 * The art of a news reporter is to learn how to lull a victim, because all good reporters are confidence tricksters in embryo.
 * Derek Tangye, British author, Chapter VII, The Way to Minack (1968).


 * I do not think that journalism is a dying art. If anything, I believe it is more important than ever, and journalists worldwide are adapting to our modus operandi - to make public officials accountable to the people. The role of the journalist is indispensable, and as reviled as reporters may intermittently be, they are still highly respected when the pursue the truth and obtain positive results. It is my hope that future journalists will adhere to the true principles of the profession and understand that they play a vital role in helping to keep democracy and the exchange of free ideas alive at home and abroad.


 * 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.
 * Hunter Thompson


 * "Why bother with newspapers, if this is all they offer? Agnew was right. The press is a gang of cruel faggots. Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits— a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage."
 * Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas p. 200 (1971)

U

 * Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
 * Text

W

 * I mean to work for 60 Minutes, and be able to go any place in the world, do any story, have enough time on the air, et cetera, there is simply no job in journalism like it. At the beginning, it was a dream. Even now, at the age of 84, I work with people who are half my age or less, and it is the draw of the story. If there is a good story going, why not be there?
 * Mike Wallace, interview in


 * 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.
 * Evelyn Waugh (1938) Scoop, I, Chapter 5, Sect. 1 &mdash; Quote reproduced in


 * It's a truism that denials never quite catch up with charges. Honest journalists who may have mistakenly printed false information know that the most prominent retraction never quite undoes the damage done by the original publication.
 * Tom Wicker, "In the Nation; Lesson of Lattimore" (June 9, 1989), The New York Times.


 * It was a fatal day when the public discovered that the pen is mightier than the paving-stone, and can be made as offensive as the brickbat. They at once sought for the journalist, found him, developed him, and made him their industrious and well-paid servant. It is greatly to be regretted, for both their sakes. Behind the barricade there may be much that is noble and heroic. But what is there behind the leading-article but prejudice, stupidity, cant, and twaddle? And when these four are joined together they make a terrible force, and constitute the new authority.
 * Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism (1891), Wilde, Oscar, (1891 / 1912) The Soul of Man Under Socialism, London, Arthur L. Humphreys. Retrieved from University of California Libraries Archive.org 13 February 2018  https://archive.org/details/soulofmanunderso00wildiala


 * In the old days men had the rack. Now they have the Press. That is an Improvement certainly. but still it is very bad, and wrong, and demoralising. Somebody - was it Burke? - called journalism the fourth estate. That was true at the time, no doubt. But at the present moment it really is the only estate. It has eaten up the other three. The Lords Temporal say nothing, The Lords Spiritual have nothing to say and the House of Commons has nothing to say and says it. We are dominated by journalism.
 * Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism (1891), Wilde, Oscar, (1891 / 1912) The Soul of Man Under Socialism, London, Arthur L. Humphreys. Retrieved from University of California Libraries Archive.org 13 February 2018  https://archive.org/details/soulofmanunderso00wildiala


 * In America, the President reigns for four years, and journalism governs for ever and ever. Fortunately, in America journalism has carried its authority to the grossest and most brutal extreme. As a natural consequence it has begun to create a spirit of revolt, people are amused by it, or disgusted by it, according to their temperaments. but it is no longer the real force it was. It is not seriously treated. In England, journalism, except in a few well-known instances, not having been carried to such excesses of brutality, is still a great factor, a remarkable power. The tyranny that it proposes to exercise over people's private lives seems to me to be quite extraordinary.
 * Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism (1891), Wilde, Oscar, (1891 / 1912) The Soul of Man Under Socialism, London, Arthur L. Humphreys. Retrieved from University of California Libraries Archive.org 13 February 2018  https://archive.org/details/soulofmanunderso00wildiala


 * Here we allow absolute freedom to the journalist and entirely limit the artist. English public opinion, that is to say, tries to constrain and impede and warp the man who makes things that are beautiful in effect, and compels the journalist to retail things that are ugly, or disgusting, or revolting in fact, so that we have the most serious journalists in the world and the most indecent newspapers.
 * Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism (1891), Wilde, Oscar, (1891 / 1912) The Soul of Man Under Socialism, London, Arthur L. Humphreys. Retrieved from University of California Libraries Archive.org 13 February 2018  https://archive.org/details/soulofmanunderso00wildiala


 * The fact is, that the public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesmanlike habits, supplies their demands.
 * Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism (1891), Wilde, Oscar, (1891 / 1912) The Soul of Man Under Socialism, London, Arthur L. Humphreys. Retrieved from University of California Libraries Archive.org 26 February 2018  https://archive.org/details/soulofmanunderso00wildiala


 * There is much to be said in favor of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community. By carefully chronicling the current events of contemporary life, it shows us of what very little importance such events really are. By invariably discussing the unnecessary, it makes us understand what things are requisite for culture, and what are not.
 * Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist (1891), Part II


 * Ernest: But what is the difference between Literature and Journalism? Gilbert: Journalism is unreadable and Literature is not read. That is all.
 * Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist Part I (1891), Wilde, Oscar, (1891 / 1905) The Critic As Artist Part II, in Intentions New York, Bretanos. Retrieved from Library of Congress Americana Archive.org 26 February 2018  https://archive.org/details/intentionsdecayo00wild


 * As for modern Journalism, its not my business to defend it. It justifies its own existence by the great Darwinian principle of the survival of the vulgarest.
 * Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist Part I (1891), Wilde, Oscar, (1891 / 1905) The Critic As Artist Part II, in Intentions New York, Bretanos. Retrieved from Library of Congress Americana Archive.org 26 February 2018  https://archive.org/details/intentionsdecayo00wild

to bribe or twist, thank God! the British journalist. But, seeing what the man will do unbribed, there's no occasion to.
 * You cannot hope
 * Humbert Wolfe, "Over the Fire", in The Uncelestial City (1930).


 * If somebody came from Mars to America and went around for months or years, and then you asked them who has the best jobs, they would say the journalists, because the journalists get to make momentary entries into people's lives when they are interesting, and get out when they cease to be interesting.
 * Bob Woodward, interview in

Y

 * I hate journalists. There is nothing in them but tittering jeering emptiness... The shallowest people on the ridge of the earth.
 * W. B. Yeats Letter to Katharine Tynan (30 August 1888)

He tells his lies by rote; A Journalist makes up his lies, And takes you by the throat.
 * A Statesman is an easy man,
 * W. B. Yeats in The Old Stone Cross


 * Journalism today is for the most part gentlemanly and decorous, in so far as the relations among newspapers in the big cities are concerned. But in that day the New York dailies openly assailed one another's actions and motives with all the contempt that lily-white citizens might express toward horse-thieves and road agents. Dana of the Sun and Pulitzer of the World fought a long feud, widely talked about, and the World and Herald frequently snarled at each other.
 * Art Young: His Life and Times (1939)

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

 * Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 407-08.


 * I would *  *  *  earnestly advise them for their good to order this paper to be punctually served up, and to be looked upon as a part of the tea equipage.
 * Joseph Addison, Spectator, No. 10.


 * They consume a considerable quantity of our paper manufacture, employ our artisans in printing, and find business for great numbers of indigent persons.
 * Joseph Addison, Spectator, No. 367.


 * Advertisements are of great use to the vulgar. First of all, as they are instruments of ambition. A man that is by no means big enough for the Gazette, may easily creep into the advertisements; by which means we often see an apothecary in the same paper of news with a plenipotentiary, or a running footman with an ambassador.
 * Joseph Addison, Tatler, No. 224.


 * The great art in writing advertisements is the finding out a proper method to catch the reader's eye; without which a good thing may pass over unobserved, or be lost among commissions of bankrupt.
 * Joseph Addison, Tatler, No. 224.


 * Ask how to live? Write, write, write, anything; The world's a fine believing world, write news.
 * Beaumont and Fletcher, Wit without Money, Act II.


 * [The opposition Press] which is in the hands of malecontents who have failed in their career.
 * Otto von Bismarck, to a deputation from Rügen to the King (Nov. 10, 1862).


 * Hear, land o' cakes, and brither Scots, Frae Maidenkirk to Johnny Groat's; If there's a hole in a' your coats, * I rede you tent it: A chiel's amang you taking notes, * And, faith, he'll prent it.
 * Robert Burns, On Capt. Grose's Peregrinations Through Scotland.


 * The editor sat in his sanctum, his countenance furrowed with care, His mind at the bottom of business, his feet at the top of a chair, His chair-arm an elbow supporting, his right hand upholding his head, His eyes on his dusty old table, with different documents spread.
 * Will Carleton, Farm Ballads, The Editor's Guests.


 * Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporter's gallery yonder, there sat a fourth estate more important far than they all.
 * Thomas Carlyle, Heroes and Hero-Worship. Lecture V. Burke is credited with having invented the term, but it does not appear in his published works. The "three estates of the realm" are the Lords Spiritual, The Lords Temporal, and the Commons. David Lindslay—Ane pleasant satyre of the Three Estatis. (1535). Rabelais—in Pantagruel, 4–48 describes a monk, a falconer, a lawyer, and a husbandman called the "four estates of the island." (Les quatre estatz de l'isle).


 * A parliament speaking through reporters to Buncombe and the Twenty-seven millions, mostly fools.
 * Thomas Carlyle, Latter Day Pamphlets. No, VI. Parliaments.


 * Get your facts first, and then you can distort 'em as much as you please.
 * Mark Twain, Interview with Kipling, In From Sea to Sea, Epistle 37.


 * Only a newspaper! Quick read, quick lost, Who sums the treasure that it carries hence? Torn, trampled under feet, who counts thy cost, Star-eyed intelligence?
 * Mary Clemmer, The Journalist, Stanza 9.


 * To serve thy generation, this thy fate: "Written in water," swiftly fades thy name; But he who loves his kind does, first and late, A work too great for fame.
 * Mary Clemmer, The Journalist. Last Stanza.


 * I believe it has been said that one copy of the Times contains more useful information than the whole of the historical works of Thucydides.
 * Richard Cobden, speech at the Manchester Athenæum, Dec. 27, 1850. See The Times, Dec. 30, 1830, p. 7. Quoted in Morley's Life of Cobden. Note, Volume II, p. 429. Also reference to same, p. 428.


 * Did Charity prevail, the press would prove A vehicle of virtue, truth, and love.
 * William Cowper, Charity, line 624.


 * How shall I speak thee, or thy power address, Thou God of our idolatry, the Press. *   *    *    *    * Like Eden's dead probationary tree, Knowledge of good and evil is from thee.
 * William Cowper, Progress of Error, line 452.


 * He comes, the herald of a noisy world, With spatter'd boots, strapp'd waist, and frozen locks; News from all nations lumbering at his back.
 * William Cowper, The Task (1785), Book IV, line 5.


 * When found, make a note of.
 * Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son, Chapter 15.


 * Miscellanists are the most popular writers among every people; for it is they who form a communication between the learned and the unlearned, and, as it were, throw a bridge between those two great divisions of the public.
 * Isaac D'Israeli, Literary Character of Men of Genius, Miscellanists.


 * None of our political writers … take notice of any more than three estates, namely, Kings, Lords and Commons … passing by in silence that very large and powerful body which form the fourth estate in the community … the Mob.
 * Henry Fielding, Covent Garden Journal (June 13, 1752).


 * Caused by a dearth of scandal should the vapors Distress our fair ones—let them read the papers.
 * David Garrick, Prologue to Sheridan's School for Scandal.


 * The liberty of the press is the palladium of all the civil, political, and religious rights of an Englishman.
 * Junius, Dedication to Letters.


 * The highest reach of a news-writer is an empty Reasoning on Policy, and vain Conjectures on the public Management.
 * Jean de La Bruyère, The Characters or Manners of the Present Age (1688), Chapter I.


 * The News-writer lies down at Night in great Tranquillity, upon a piece of News which corrupts before Morning, and which he is obliged to throw away as soon as he awakes.
 * Jean de La Bruyère, The Characters or Manners of the Present Age (1688), Chapter I.


 * Tout faiseur de journaux doit tribut au Malin.
 * Every newspaper editor owes tribute to the devil.
 * Jean de La Fontaine, Lettre à Simon de Troyes (1686).


 * Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever lays one down without a feeling of disappointment.
 * Charles Lamb, Essays of Elia, Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading.


 * Behold the whole huge earth sent to me hebdomadally in a brown paper wrapper.
 * James Russell Lowell, Biglow Papers, Series I. No. 6.


 * I fear three newspapers more than a hundred thousand bayonets.
 * Napoleon I.


 * The penny-papers of New York do more to govern this country than the White House at Washington.
 * Wendell Phillips.


 * We live under a government of men and morning newspapers.
 * Wendell Phillips.


 * The press is like the air, a chartered libertine.
 * William Pitt, to Lord Grenville (About 1757).


 * The mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease.
 * Alexander Pope, Epistles of Horace, Epistle I, Book II, line 108.


 * Cela est escrit. Il est vray.
 * The thing is written. It is true.
 * François Rabelais, Pantagruel.


 * Can it be maintained that a person of any education can learn anything worth knowing from a penny paper? It may be said that people may learn what is said in Parliament. Well, will that contribute to their education?
 * Salisbury (Lord Robert Cecil), Speeches. House of Commons, 1861. On the Repeal of the Paper Duties.


 * The newspapers! Sir, they are the most villanous—licentious—abominable—infernal—not that I ever read them—no—I make it a rule never to look into a newspaper.
 * Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The Critic, Act I, scene 1.


 * Trade hardly deems the busy day begun Till his keen eye along the sheet has run; The blooming daughter throws her needle by, And reads her schoolmate's marriage with a sigh; While the grave mother puts her glasses on, And gives a tear to some old crony gone. The preacher, too, his Sunday theme lays down To know what last new folly fills the town; Lively or sad, life's meanest, mightiest things, The fate of fighting cocks, or fighting kings.
 * Sprague, Curiosity.


 * Here shall the Press the People's right maintain, Unawed by influence and unbribed by gain; Here Patriot Truth her glorious precepts draw, Pledged to Religion, Liberty, and Law.
 * Joseph Story, Motto of the Salem Register. Adopted 1802. Reported in William W. Story's Life of Joseph Story, Volume I, Chapter VI.


 * The thorn in the cushion of the editorial chair.
 * William Makepeace Thackeray, Roundabout Papers, The Thorn in the Cushion.

Attributed

 * Knoll's Law of Media Accuracy: Everything you read in the newspapers is absolutely true — except for the rare story of which you happen to have firsthand knowledge.
 * Erwin Knoll, editor, The Progressive


 * In America the president reigns for four years, and journalism governs forever and ever.
 * Oscar Wilde &mdash; quoted in


 * When a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news.
 * John B. Bogartto, New York Sun editor. Attributed in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 16th edition, 1992, p. 554. See also Man bites dog.


 * I do not care for the big 'ideas' of novelists. Novels are wonderful, of course, but I prefer newspapers.
 * Will Cuppy in Stanley J. Kunitz and Howard Haycraft (eds.), Twentieth Century Authors, New York: H.W. Wilson Company, 1942, p. 342.


 * Journalism is the first rough draft of history.
 * Originally stated in slightly different forms “News/The press [is the] … first rough draft of history”, this form dates at least to the 1940s, and was most likely popularized by, as an editorial writer for the Washington Post in the 1940s. The sentiment appears several times in the editorial pages of the Post in that era, with the earliest citation from Barth being 1943:
 * News is only the first rough draft of history.
 * , review of The Autobiography of a Curmudgeon by in , 1943, collected in The New Republic, Volume 108, p. 677
 * Subsequent uses in the Post include:
 * Newspapers, after all, are the first drafts of history, or pretend they are.
 * Unsigned "Editor's Note" in The Washington Post (16 October 1944)
 * Similar sentiment date to the first decade of the 1900s, including: “First draft of history” (journalism), November 23, 2009, Barry Popik
 * It is possible that a first rough draft of the History, down to 413, may have been sketched by Thucydides before 405.
 * (omits “news”, refers to specific text) 1902,, Thucydides, Encyclopaedia Britannica, 10th Edition (1902) Cited by Babette Hogan in comments to Shafer 2010
 * The newspapers are making morning after morning the rough draft of history. Later, the historian will come, take down the old files, and transform the crude but sincere and accurate annals of editors and reporters into history, into literature. The modern school must study the daily newspaper.
 * (omits “first”) 1905 December 5, The State, “The Educational Value of 'News.’” Page 4, Column 4, Columbia, South Carolina Newspapers: “the rough draft of history”, by Tony Pettinato, October 4th, 2010. Cited by Garson O'Toole of Quote Investigator, citing the database GenealogyBank, in comments to Shafer 2010
 * A reporter is a young man who blocks out the first draft of history each day on a rheumatic typewriter.
 * (omits “rough”) 3 July 1914, Lincoln (NE) Daily Star, “The Reporter” by George Fitch, pg. 6, col. 4
 * This quote is generally incorrectly credited to, in an address to Newsweek correspondents in London (1963): “Who Said It First? Journalism is the 'first rough draft of history.’” by , Slate (30 August 2010) Personal History (1997) by
 * So let us today drudge on about our inescapably impossible task of providing every week a first rough draft of history that will never be completed about a world we can never really understand.
 * While this may have popularized the quote, earlier statements were given by others (as above), and even by Graham himself, including:
 * The inescapable hurry of the press inevitably means a certain degree of superficiality. It is neither within our power nor our province to be ultimately profound. We write 365 days a year the first rough draft of history, and that is a very great task.
 * Address to the American Society for Public Administration (8 March 1953) Published in “Public Administration and the Press”, Philip L. Graham, Public Administration Review, Volume 13, No. 2 (Spring, 1953), pp. 87–88
 * Various other misattributions exist – misattributes it to  in her memoir First Row at the White House.