Thomas Jefferson Quotes

Making stuff up is the worst thing a journalist can do. Plagiarizing is the second worst.

Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.

I think the media's responsibility is to get to the bottom of things - to get to the truth.

The press is impotent when it abandons itself to falsehood.

I have long been a supporter of a free and independent press and I always will be. But with freedom comes responsibility.

I am not responsible for all the journalists in the past that have told lies.

The press should form a fortress of steel round the republic. The republic has a right to demand this from journalists. The struggle is not over; the press has a duty to convey this truth to the nation and safeguard its unity.

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

Liberty of the press is a privilege to publish, with impunity, falsehood on matters of public concern, in the honest belief it is truth, with good motives, for justifiable ends

We need ethical journalism. There is also capacity limitations in journalism.

Everyone is free to express their opinions, but I think that journalists should do it with more responsibility. They lack accuracy.

Media bias in editorials and columns is one thing. Media fraud in reporting 'facts' in news stories is something else. ...The issue is not what various journalists or news organizations' editorial views are. The issue is the transformation of news reporting into ideological spin, along with self-serving taboos and outright fraud.

You have to draw lines between being a journalist and an activist.

Journalism can never be silent: that is its greatest virtue and its greatest fault.

I want to see an honest press.

...the indispensable requirement for a good newspaperman - as eager to tell a lie as the truth.

With a free press comes a responsibility.

We have to uphold a free press and freedom of speech - because, in the end, lies and misinformation are no match for the truth.

A lot of the people involved in the media are very serious, honest people, and they will tell you, and I think they are right, that they are not being forced to write anything.

No matter how imperfect things are, if you've got a free press everything is correctable, and without it everything is concealable.

The durability of free speech and free press rests on the simple concept that it search for the truth and tell the truth.

The idea that a reporter has to be 'fair and balanced' is ridiculous. The fact is, the truth usually is not fair and it's not balanced. Truth stands by itself. And the idea that something called fair and balanced is a substitute for truth and fact is mindless nonsense that has captured much of the national media.

In the military, if we don't know something, we say we don't know and proceed to shut up until we do. Some highly paid charlatans in the media think it's absolutely fine to take a wild guess at the truth and then tell a couple of million people it's cast-iron fact, just in case they might be right...I hope they're proud of themselves, because they nearly broke my mom's heart.

The media has a responsibility. And we can't let them totally get away because they have to let the truth be seen and be told.

The press is the foe of rhetoric, but the friend of reason.