Quotes about newspapers

Our stable and eternal verities are being challenged. There's a kind of postmodern breakdown in journalism. The breadth of information sources and the speed of transmission are growing but the traditional gravity of news has eroded. -Jin Yongquan

Freedom of the press in Britain is freedom to print such of the proprietor's prejudices as the advertisers don't object to.

Newspapers have developed what might be called a vested interest in catastrophe. If they can spot a fight they play up that fight. If they can uncover a tragedy they will headline that tragedy.

Everything you read in the newspapers is absolutely true except for that rare story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge.

I do not take a single newspaper nor read one a month and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it.

Burke said there were three Estates in Parliament but in the reporters' gallery yonder there sat a fourth Estate more important than them all.

Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

Remember son many a good story has been ruined by over-verification.

Don't be afraid to make a mistake your readers might like it.

One newspaper a day ought to be enough for anyone who still prefers to retain a little mental balance.

Journalism is literature in a hurry.

The sports page records people's accomplishments the front page usually records nothing but man's failures.

If some great catastrophe is not announced every morning we feel a certain void. 'Nothing in the paper today ' we sigh.

Carelessness is not fatal to journalism nor are cliches for the eye rests lightly on them. But what is intended to be read once can seldom be read more than once a journalist has to accept the fact that his work by its very todayness is excluded from any share in tomorrow.

He had been kicked in the head by a mule when young and believed everything he read in the Sunday papers.

An editor - a person employed on a newspaper whose business it is to separate the wheat from the chaff and to see that the chaff is printed.

The day you write to please everyone you no longer are in journalism. You are in show business.

News is the first rough draft of history.

It is a newspaper's duty to print the news and raise hell.

What you see is news what you know is background what you feel is opinion.

Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.

A good newspaper is a nation talking to itself.

The first essence of journalism is to know what you want to know the second is to find out who will tell you.

Today's reporter is forced to become an educator more concerned with explaining the news than with being first on the scene.

A writer who takes up journalism abandons the slow tempo of literature for a faster one and the change will do him harm. By degrees the flippancy of journalism will become a habit and the pleasure of being paid on the nail and more especially of being praised on the nail grow indispensable.

Newspapers are the world's mirrors.

Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without government I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

Every editor of newspapers pays tribute to the devil.

Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.

Let me make the newspapers and I care not what is preached in the pulpit or what is enacted in Congress.

AH I know is what I see in the papers.

As touchy as cabaret performers and as stubborn as factory machinists....

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.

It's not the news that makes the newspaper, but the newspaper that makes the news.

Journalism delivers news, but not necessarily relevance.

But journalists thrive on not knowing exactly what the future holds. That's part of the excitement. Something interesting, something important, will happen somewhere, as sure as God made sour apples, and a good aggressive newspaper will become part of that something.

Now listen,' said George angrily, 'I’ve been in a newspaper office all evening and I know better than you what’s going on.''Nonsense. If there’s one place in the world where nobody knows what’s going on, it’s a newspaper office.

As the final computerized decade of the twentieth century came into view, time itself seemed to speed up and compress into smaller and smaller bytes, leaving less and less time over the breakfast table to ruminate on the fascinating aboriginal lore from the Australian outback or on the clandestine Israeli airlift of Ethiopian Jews out of southern Sudan. Readers preferred news that affected their own lives and they wanted it now. Leisure time was a luxury that fewer and fewer times subscribers en

Interviews were invented to make journalism less passive. Instead of waiting for something to happen, journalists ask someone what should or could happen.

There is a fearful moment of reckoning before us should it ever chance that when all our trees shall have been sacrificed on the altar of the patron-fiend of news, the newspaper supply shall suddenly be cut off and we find ourselves some fine morning minus our tidbits of shame and failure and disaster, left to the companionship of our own thoughts. Dante never imagined a terror like this.

Jessamine recoiled from the paper as if it were a snake. "A lady does not read the newspaper. The society pages, perhaps, or the theater news. Not this filth.""But you are not a lady, Jessamine---," Charlotte began."Dear me," said Will. "Such harsh truths so early in the morning cannot be good for the digestion.

I became a journalist because I did not want to rely on newspapers for information.

One of the cardinal rules of journalism: Once you have cabled a story you must stick by it and back it up, unless something completely overwhelming proves you to have been wrong. In such a case, just drop the matter.

The point is that newspapers are not there for spreading news but for covering it up. X happens, you have to report it, but it causes embarrassment for too many people, so in the same edition you add some shock headlines - mother kills four children, savings at risk of going up in smoke, letter from Garibaldi insulting his lieutenant Nino Bixio discovered, etc. - so news drowns in a great sea of information.

One reason that cats are happier than people is that they have no newspapers.

What 'primitive' men called gossip, 'civilized' men call news.

The news isn't there to tell you what happened. It's there to tell you what it wants you to hear or what it thinks you want to hear.

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 compleatly 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 suspi

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

Probably no country was ever ruled by so mean a class of tyrants as, with a few noble exceptions, are the editors of the periodical press in this country. And as they live and rule only by their servility, and appealing to the worst, and not the better nature of man, the people who read them are in the condition of the dog that returns to his vomit.

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.

The newspaper journalists like to believe the worst; they can sell more papers that way, as one of them told me himself; for even upstanding and respectable people dearly love to read ill of others.

A free press doesn't mean it's not a tame press.

Newspapers abound, and though they have endured decades of decline in readership and influence, they can still form impressive piles if no one takes them out to the trash.

Beside him Mr. Harris folded his morning newspaper and held it out to Claude."Seen this yet?""No.""Don't read it," Mr. Harris said, folding the paper once more and sliding it under his rear. "It will only upset you, son.""It's a wicked paper... " Claude agreed, but Mr. Harris was overspeaking him."It's the big black words that do it. The little grey ones don't matter very much, they're just fill-ins they take everyday from the wires. They concentrate their poison in the big black words, where it

Pretty average headlines for a worldwide catastrophe," Jane remarked as she read from Hollywood's Highest. "Some man in Africa claimed to have found the cure for AIDS, yet another politician said something about the president and now formally regrets it, and a pop star OD'd while an actress lost fifteen pounds overnight, and here's how you can, too!" She continued reading. "Oh, wow. The 'Celebrititties' section says she was in a car accident and her arms had to be amputated. Damn.

Pretty average headlines for a worldwide catastrophe,” Jane remarked as she read from Hollywood's Highest. “Some man in Africa claimed to have found the cure for AIDS, yet another politician said something about the president and now formally regrets it, and a pop star OD'd while an actress lost fifteen pounds overnight, and here's how you can, too!” She continued reading. “Oh, wow. The 'Celebrititties' section says she was in a car accident and her arms had to be amputated. Damn.

I would tell young journalists to be brave and go against the tide. When everyone else is relying on the internet, you should not; when nobody's walking, you should walk; when few people are reading profound books, you should read. ... rather than seeking a plusher life you should pursue some hardship. Eat simple food. When everyone's going for quick results, pursue things of lasting value. Don't follow the crowd; go in the opposite direction. If others are fast, be slow. -- Jin Yongquan

I think journalism anywhere should be based on social justice and impartiality, making contributions to society as well as taking responsibility in society. Whether you are capitalist or socialist or Marxist, journalists should have the same professional integrity. --Tan Hongkai

I used to think the most important thing for a reporter was to be where the news is and be the first to know. Now I feel a reporter should be able to effect change. Your reporting should move people and motivate people to change the world. Maybe this is too idealistic. Young people who want to be journalists must, first, study and, second, recognize that they should never be the heroes of the story. ..A journalist must be curious, and must be humble. --Zhou Yijun

I think that of all the principles for journalism, the most important is to complicate simple things and simplify complicated things. At first sight, you may think something is simple, but it may conceal a great deal. However, facing a very complex thing, you should find out its essence. -Jin Yongquan

Media work needs ideals. Maybe thirty years from now, after I retire, I'll see the media mature and make the transition from political party, interest group, and corporate to truly public. But over the next ten years, the encroachment of commercialism and worldliness will loom much larger than the democratization we imagine. -Jin Yongquan in China Ink

Nudity and explicit sex are far more easily available now than are clear images of death. The quasi-violence of movies and television dwells on the lively acts of killing – flying kicks, roaring weapons, crashing cars, flaming explosions. These are the moral equivalents of old-time cinematic sex. The fictional spurting of gun muzzles after flirtation and seduction but stop a titillating instant short of actual copulation. The results of such aggressive vivacity remain a mystery. The corpse itsel

Nudity and explicit sex are far more easily available now than are clear images of death. The quasi-violence of movies and television dwells on the lively acts of killing – flying kicks, roaring weapons, crashing cars, flaming explosions. These are the moral equivalents of old-time cinematic sex. The fictional spurting of gun muzzles after flirtation and seduction but stop a titillating instant short of actual copulation. The results of such aggressive vivacity remain a mystery. The corpse itsel

We read the weird tales in newspapers to crowd out the even weirder stuff inside us.

I brought the newspaper close up to my eyes to get a better view of George Pollucci's face, spotlighted like a three-quarter moon against a vague background of brick and black sky. I felt he had something important to tell me, and that whatever it was might just be written on his face.But the smudgy crags of George Pollucci's features melted away as I peered at them, and resolved themselves into a regular pattern of dark and light and medium gray dots.The inky black newspaper paragraph didn't te

We both disliked rude rickshwalas, shepu bhaji in any form, group photographs at weddings, lizards, tea that has gone cold, the habit of taking newspaper to the toilet, kissing a boy who'd just smoked a cigarette et cetra. Another list. The things we loved: strong coffee, Matisse, Rumi, summer rain, bathing together, Tom Hanks, rice pancakes, Cafe Sunrise, black-and-white photographs, the first quiet moments after you wake up in the morning.

Or was Chris thinking, as I was, that if we went tothe police and told our story, our faces would be splashed on the frontpages of every newspaper in the country? Would the glare of publicitymake up for what we'd lose? Our privacy-our need to stay together?Could we lose each other just to get even?

A rumor is usually a lie that the media can legally profit from.

I like to think of this little [newspaper] column as a brassière, or do I mean brasserie? Brazier, possibly. All three! A column that lifts, separates, supports, serves excellent cappuccino and crackles merrily with sweet-smelling old chestnuts.

NEWSPAPER: What great paper is the Earth; what a typeface is the Day; what ink is the Night! – Everyone prints, everyone reads; no one understands.

When reading a book, you are sold what some writer thought. When reading a newspaper, you are sold what someone did, and, what some advertiser made.

Newspapers are the Bibles of worldlings.How diligently they read them!Here they find their law and profits,their judges and chronicles,their epistles and revelations.

The best fiction is far more true than any journalism.

He who only reads newspapers makes his mind a junkyard.

But the old traditions of sectarian misdirection still in spite of a certain advance in technical efficiency, cripple and distort the general mind. "All that has been changed," cry indignant teachers under criticism. But the evidence that this teaching of theirs still fails to produce a public that is alert, critical, and capable of vigorous readjustment in the face of overwhelming danger, is to be seen in the newspapers that satisfy the Tewler public, the arguments and slogans that appeal to it

...wearing a turban of yellow, signifying knowledge, and a robe of purple, portraying purity and activity, Virchand Gandhi of Bombay delivered a lecture on the religions of India....

Apollinaire said a poet should be 'of his time.' I say objects of the Digital Age belong in newspapers, not literature. When I read a novel, I don’t want credit cards; I want cash in ducats and gold doubloons.

When other people are grieving, the newspaperman turns efficient.

It was summer and moonlight and we had lemonade to drink, and we held the cold glasses in our hands, and Dad read the stereo-newspapers inserted into the special hat you put on your head and which turned the microscopic page in front of the magnifying lens if you blinked three times in succession.

It's from the newspapers that people I know - relatives and co-workers - have got the idea that crosswords are a prophylactic against Alzheimer's. Newspapers are of course also the place where crosswords (and now sudokus) are most readily available, so the association is presumably good for circulation.

I guess that's how they were able to do it, in the way they did, all at once, without anyone knowing beforehand. If there had still been portable money, it would have been more difficult. "It was after the catastrophe, when they shot the president and machine-gunned the Congress and the army declared a state of emergency. They blamed it on the Islamic fanatics, at the time. "Keep calm, they said on television. Everything is under control. "I was stunned. Everyone was, I know that. It was hard to

Six men control almost all the media in the United States--book publishing, magazines, television, movie studios, newspapers, and radio. They are not friendly toward feminism, which has almost disappeared from the surface of our society. You will almost never see a feminist column on an op-ed page, a feminist article in a magazine, or newspaper, actual (not satirized) feminist ideas on television or in the movies. Only magazines & radio controlled by feminists--and these are few and not well-fun

​It is Obscene to keep Printing Newspapers in the Digital Era

I don’t mind my friends calling me 'Thornes,' but the fact of people calling me 'Prickly Thornes' draws the line.

If the newspapers begin to publish stories about wars, and the people begin to think and talk of war in their daily conversations, they soon find themselves at war. People get that which their minds dwell upon, and this applies to a group or community or a nation of people, the same as to an individual

Several people toss and turn in their sleep, startled by the lines of the newspapers in their dreams, knives out, lights out, lights out, knives out!

Having learned to write news, I now distrust newspapers as a source of information, and I am often surprised by historians who take them as primary source for knowing what really happened. I think newspapers should be read for information about how contemporaries construed events, rather than for reliable knowledge of events themselves.

Things were rather larger, more obvious and rougher on the American side, but the issues were essentially the same. The general public voted and demonstrated, but its voting seemed to lead to nothing. It felt that things were done behind its back and over its head but it could never understand clearly how. It never seemed able to get sound news out of its newspapers nor good faith out of its politicians. It resisted, it fumbled, it was becoming more and more suspicious and sceptical, but it was

Sports, Politics and Technology. All the same game.

Don't tell me about the Press. I know *exactly* who reads the papers. The Daily Mirror is read by the people who think they run the country. The Guardian is read by people who think they *ought* to run the country. The Times is read by the people who actually *do* run the country. The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country. The Financial Times is read by people who *own* the country. The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by *another*

To look at the paper is to raise a seashell to one's ear and to be overwhelmed by the roar of humanity.