Barbara Boxer Quotes

Well, thank God for a media that will ask questions.

I'm very much in support of the free press, but the free press ought to be educational and informative. And I believe they have fallen down recently on that.

You have to create public activist pressure on papers like the 'New York Times' to keep them accountable.

I myself have felt the wrath of the media, but that's part of what a good democracy is.

There is a terrific disadvantage in not having the abrasive quality of the press applied to you daily. Even though we never like it, and even though we wish they didn't write it, and even though we disapprove, there isn't any doubt that we could not do the job at all in a free society without a very, very active press.

So that all the people who say, you know, "All the media hates America." A lot of the media does hate America but this is a case of, actually, the press doing its best, I think, to do the right by national security. So good for them.

I respect very much the role of the media in our society; I think they can be very, very helpful. They serve as a very useful check, sort of a watchdog over the actions of the government, and I respect that. But there is a competing interest, and that is the ability of prosecutors to get information that may be absolutely essential to assist them in the investigation of illegal wrongdoing. And so you've got these two competing interests. I believe that the current policy at the Department of Justice reflects a careful balancing of those interests.

I believe in a free and open press; people have to cover the presidency, respect the office and its current occupant. And we need it to be a two-way street.

Public men are all amenable to the tribunal of the press in a free state. The greater, indeed, their trust, the more respectable are they.

There is a permanent war between journalists and the political classes.

The press is supposed to watch the powerful. And not throw in with them.

Flaws and all, I believe the free press is our country's most important institution - one I am more than happy to defend. One I did, in fact, defend for 37 years.

Being beyond politics, I am able to examine the role of the media without worrying about the indignant harrumphing that emanates from many journalists and commentators when you do so.

We don't push back hard enough against the government. We could use, the country in general could use a more adversarial press corps, especially when it comes to matters of national security.

Media wants to know everything. We are in this industry: we have to get used to it; we are still getting used to it. So I have no complaints. They are doing their job.

As soon as you make a mistake, you're killed by the press.

I think aggressive, sometimes outspoken reporting from the White House briefing room is expected by the American people.

There is no democracy without journalism.

Is it really the right of the media to dictate to the president whom he will allow in his press conferences? That's tetchier. And then there is the added issue of whether it would be a service to their readers, and the country at large, for, say, the Washington Post to take itself out of the room -- meaning they don't have the ability to ask important questions the president is obliged to answer? I think that would be a mistake.

I do worry about the press and a President Trump. You know, I think it's dangerous the entire de-legitimization that he's engaged in against all of the media because the people, as much as it's fun to hate us, they do need us. You know, they need good, strong skeptical journalists to be covering whoever it is, whether it's Barack Obama or President Donald Trump.

The thing I sort of get tired of hearing is if I don't hit home runs or don't get hits, that the pressure of the media is getting to me. Absolutely not. Believe me, it's not getting to me.

Barack Obama makes more gaffes than George Bush and Sarah Palin combined and is never called on it.

The country is in some trouble, because the media, which is supposed to provide a check and balance on government, has decided to stop doing that as a collective entity.

The function of a newspaper in a democracy is to stand as a sort of chronic opposition to the reigning quacks. The minute it begins to out-whoop them it forfeits its character and becomes ridiculous.

Politicians who complain about the media are like sailors who complain about the sea.