Roger Mudd Quotes

I wish we could go back to the time when the private lives of our public figures were relevant only if they directly affected their public responsibilities.

As an elected official, I live a very public life. That elected figures live under something of a microscope is perhaps a necessary condition for an informed public, and yet, even as a public official, I maintain very personal documents that are not intended for public view.

In the end, the public has the right to know about any undertakings top public officials engage in that may influence how they conduct the people's business.

The British press has an insatiable appetite for making public things that should be private. It's a prurience that I've never understood.

But the time has come for journalists to acknowledge that a zone of privacy does exist.

Except for politics, no business is scrutinized more exhaustively than journalism.

We've got to figure out a way that we give a private sphere for our public leaders. We're not gonna get the best people in public life if we don't do that.

When a man assumes a public trust, he should consider himself as public property.

It is very unfair to expect a politician to live in private up to the statements he makes in public.

American newspapers disregard principles to seize on people, following them into their private lives and laying bare their weaknesses and their vices.

Can public men have private lives?

Transparency is for those who carry out public duties and exercise public power. Privacy is for everyone else.

While I accept that there are certain things about my private life that will always be of interest to the public, it would be better if you give the same amount of attention to issues that matter as well.

It's a big challenge for me to keep my integrity and some of my privacy intact.

I think fame is harder when people have something to hide, but I'm very comfortable, and have nothing to hide.

Any privacy in public is a hard thing to negotiate.

I'm a very loyal and very private person when it comes to my personal life. But I obviously do have Twitter and Instagram, and I will share some of the things I'm doing.

In the end, it is because the media are driven by the power and wealth of private individuals that they turn private lives into public spectacles. If every private life is now potentially public property, it is because private property has undermined public responsibility.

However, when the privilege depends solely on the broad, undifferentiated claim of public interest in the confidentiality of such conversations, a confrontation with other values arises.

I don't see why it gives people the right to know about my private life if I don't want to talk about it.

I do not believe the president’s sex life is any of our business. After 30 years of political reporting I have been unable to establish a link between marital fidelity and high performance in public office. It really doesn’t matter who they screw in private as long as they don’t screw the public.

It is impossible to differentiate between what I say in my individual capacity from what I say as President.

Public men are bees working in a glass hive.

If you run for public office today you must be prepared for a massive invasion of privacy.

The press are the representative of the people and they have a right to know, but they don’t have the right to know right now…. There is an art to telling the truth slowly.