William Scranton Quotes

The press briefing today I believe has lost much of its usefulness.

You always get told how important the premiere and doing the press is, but I have suspicions.

I am convinced that dealing intelligently with the press is of the greatest importance to the success and effectiveness of a humanitarian mission.

The press secretary who starts to narrow down or close the president's options because he answers delicate negotiating questions no longer serves the president.

You have to give the press confrontations. When you give them confrontations, you get attention; when you get attention, you can educate.

Overall, I'm not upset at the press.

People at Facebook are fairly used to the press being nice to us or not nice to us.

Other reasons for requiring press officers to review interview requests were to have an orderly flow of information out of a sprawling agency and to avoid surprises. This is not about any individual or any issue like global warming. It's about coordination.

It was my job to get the skeletons out of the closet and into the press—which I did.

I have a running war with the media. And they sort of made it sound like I had a feud with the intelligence community.

Every press secretary faces an enormous amount of information. Events move really fast. You're responsible for a tremendous amount of information, and again, a tremendous amount on competing agendas. Not everybody grease in the White House.

During my years as a press secretary, I developed a powerful internal filter, which worked to strip all things 'off message' from my thoughts before they came out of my mouth. It didn't always work, of course, and I said more than a few things I regretted.

I don't read my own press, so I don't know what's being reported on a daily basis - I only hear about things when they reach a sort of Def-Con status, and my publicist calls me because we have to do some damage control.

My job is to be a spokesman - the spokesman, I suppose - for the President, for the White House, to do the daily briefings, to manage the press corps in terms of travel, day-to-day needs, access, interviews, all those issues.

Corporate communications will become a high-tech art, just as political communication is for Obama.

Most of the press is sent to my publicist so I do see most of what is written about me.

The public relations phases of this campaign call for the same careful planning and strategy as you and your staff employed in setting up the invasion of Normandy, and the same careful planning that we, in our business, employ in order to insure the successful introduction to the public of a new product or service.

I'm sure if I have plans, the Press will inform me.

Every organization has men and women who will be sure that the news gets out when it is good news. The problem is with the bad news. That is the challenge of democracy

When presidents are in trouble, there's two things they always do: reshuffle the staff and call in a bunch of reporters for advice.

You can take a position with the media, but don’t necessarily get in their face.

Every politician higher up than assistant water commissioner knows how to avoid tough questions [from reporters]: Don't answer them.

The press conference is as much a White House fixture as the cabinet meeting.

If the press doesn’t get the proper care and feeding, you don’t get the proper spin on your story.

I was asked to write a press briefing emphasizing the positive steps the administration had taken in the area and minimizing the negative ones. I was an Assistant to the President. I have done that for several Presidents. When you’re on the staff of the President of the United States you try and make things look as good as possible.