Howard Fineman Quotes

IT is difficult to speak or write with becoming moderation or propriety, on topics to which we are biased by prejudice, interest, or even principle.

I'm a little concerned about this notion everybody wants us to be objective.

No one is a good judge in his own cause.

There is no human objectivity.

What people call impartiality may simply mean indifference, and what people call partiality may simply mean mental activity.

I'm very partisan, but I'm also very fair.

I have come to learn that preliminary judgments are not judgments.

Objectivity in the end is an unattainable ideal.

I'll never be able to listen to anything we've done like someone who's just picked it up for the first time.

There are only two ways to be quite unprejudiced and impartial. One is to be completely ignorant. The other is to be completely indifferent. Bias and prejudice are attitudes to be kept in hand, not attitudes to be avoided.

When it starts to seem like you have popped into bed with a specific party, it makes it difficult for people to believe you are not doing someone else's bidding for them.

Truth is not a matter of personal viewpoint.

I don't view myself as a political leftie. I view myself as a storyteller who is fair to both sides.

It is unsound for an independent editor to be a financial contributor to any cause which would cause any type of special pleading.

Anybody who doesn't think I want the Lakers to win is a fool. But I'm no homer.

Nobody outside of a baby carriage or a judge's chamber believes in an unprejudiced point of view.

It sounds funny, but I always try to keep an open mind about what I'm writing about. Sometimes I squeak my opinions in there, but generally I don't. I try to be objective about things that I'm writing about.

It's not proper for a professor to go before a class and promote one party or another. That's not academic scholarship.

I warn my readers against my biases.

The good journalist is never objective. He is always neutral.

It helps to have “has beens” on commissions because they have no political ax to grind.

You could say that any book that takes a position is not fair, unless you keep saying, 'On the one hand, on the other...' and take a great deal of trouble to present both sides. That kind of journalism tends not to be very interesting.

I think most people are indifferent in their evaluation of what is good or bad.

Politics can cloud objectivity.

Listening to both sides does not necessarily bring about a correct judgment.