Helen Thomas Quotes

Whenever you're reporting, there's always something you can't say or write, but the questions, you always want to get as close to that line as possible. You want to ask the tough questions.

All the news that fits we print.

The newspapers! Sir, they are the most villainous — licentious — abominable — infernal — Not that I ever read them — no — I make it a rule never to look into a newspaper.

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.

The reason people get afraid of writing real, honest journalism and fiction, and the reason corrupted people and demagogues are afraid of journalism and fiction and poetry across the world, is because it is a subversive form.

Some of the press who speak loudly about the freedom of the press are themselves the enemies of freedom. Countless people dare not say a thing because they know it will be picked up and made a song of by the press. That limits freedom.

It is an odd thing about newspapers that they live by exposure, yet they keep their own worlds concealed.

There's an old saw about journalism that the more you know about a subject, the less sense reporting about it makes.

In any event, the proper question isn't what a journalist thinks is relevant but what his or her audience thinks is relevant. Denying people information they would find useful because you think they shouldn't find it useful is censorship, not journalism.

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

Fear rules almost every newsroom in the country.

Al Jazeera is known in the Arab world as the voice of freedom of expression.

I've thought for the last decade or so, the only actual place raw truth was seeping through in newspapers was on the Comics Pages. They were able to pull off intelligent social comment, pure truths not found elsewhere in the news pages, and had the ability to make it all funny, entertaining, and pertinent.

I keep telling myself to calm down, to take less of an interest in things and not to get so excited, but I still care a lot about liberty, freedom of speech and expression, and fairness in journalism.

It is grievous to read the papers in most respects, I agree. More and more I skim the headlines only, for one can be sure what is carried beneath them quite automatically, if one has long been a reader of the press journalism.

This is a nation that has lost the ability to be self-critical, and that makes a lie out of the freedoms.

So this guy, Jeff Johnson, who is an accountant who cares nothing at all about a free press and cares nothing about journalism, he's a right winger who supported the war, you know, who two years ago told people he couldn't stand a word that I wrote.

If I had my choice I would kill every reporter in the world, but I am sure we would be getting reports from Hell before breakfast.

There is much to be said in favour of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.

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

Once you “volunteer” and engage in self-censorship something happens to your conscience.

In the years before its victory in 1949, the [Communist] Party newspapers were constantly criticizing the Chiang Kai-shek regime for repression of free speech, and often issued loud appeals on behalf of persecuted voices of conscience.

For if Men are to be precluded from offering their Sentiments on a matter, which may involve the most serious and alarming consequences, that can invite the consideration of Mankind, reason is of no use to us; the freedom of Speech may be taken away, and, dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep, to the Slaughter.

Governments and reactionary groups resort to nationalism, victimization, and suppression to keep foreign or offending speech at bay.