Jon Meacham Quotes

I think there are a lot of reasons to be critical of the media in America.

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

Journalism is not a precise science, it's a crude art

In these times we fight for ideas and newspapers are our fortress.

Our Republic and its press will rise or fall together.

I'm not in the judgment part of journalism.

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

Journalism is irrepressible. It can't be taken away.

Wikileaks in its essence is a publisher, pure and simple. They were very much in the same position as 'The New York Times' and 'The Guardian.'

One of the most important roles of our journalists is to be watchdogs.

The bias of the media is neither liberal nor conservative but negative.

I think you should be able to have a press conference without having reporters key in on certain divisive issues.

A people without reliable news is, sooner or later, a people without the basis of freedom.

If we shake the pillar of a free and objective press, we're harming our American national interests.

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

The more servile a reporter is toward his sources, the more authoritative he can appear in print.

Today the greatest evil—and therefore the most immediate—is the press.

Is journalism a profession that serves the public by maintaining high standards, or is it a social construct that should be redesigned to directly serve certain social goods? Some argue that all journalism involves bias, either hidden or revealed. But it is one thing to say that objectivity and fairness are ultimately unreachable. It is another to cease grasping for them. That would be a world of purely private truths, in which the boldest liars and demagogues would thrive.

Journalists, by and large, are not the irascible free thinkers of lore, going their own way without fear or favor. Corporate institutions as a rule have limited use for such people. Especially in today’s electronic environment, journalists are creatures of availability bias, to borrow a term from social science. They believe what others in their milieu believe, say what others are saying, because it’s in their interest to do so.

Journalists always explain that people are mad at them because they tell the truth, which is often unpleasant or uncomfortable to hear. However, they fail in situations where there is more than one truth.

The hired journalist, I thought, ought to realize that he is partly in the entertainment business and partly in the advertising business - advertising either goods, or a cause, or a government. He just has to make up his mind whom he wants to entertain, and what he wants to advertise.

The quality of democracy and the quality of journalism are deeply entwined.

There is no journalist without opinions, and there's no real objectivity, but we can strive toward it.

Is it against the law to kill a reporter?

I don't trust most journalists who belong to Anglo Saxon stock because we know what your inclinations are.