Brian Stelter Quotes

Obama's people will all often complain about how trivial and silly the media is, but there's no president who's probably benefited from this sort of trivialness or superficial nature as President Obama.

I cover media people the way they cover politicians.

Past occurrences have generally shown that there hasn’t been satisfaction from politicians in the manner they were covered [by the press.]

…Democrats are complaining that they can’t get their message out … because Donald Trump has blotted out the media sun. … The eclipse won’t end. The media has turned the Trump presidency into a phenomenon of constant self-absorption—their self-absorption in this one person. Donald Trump has become the biggest balloon in a political Macy’s parade of modern media’s own creation. They could let go of the ropes. But they won’t.

The Times has much less power than you think. I believe we attribute power to the media generally that it simply doesn't have. It's very convenient to blame the media, the same way we blame television for everything that's going wrong in society.

American media has just become talk radio, incredibly partisan name-calling and op-eds. I think the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan proved it has completely failed to act as an effective fourth estate. And young people didn't sleep through that, as is widely believed; they learned instead not to trust what they were being told.

I think the media needs a little criticizing now, as it did in the '80s, don't you?

I am not here to accuse the media of anything.

Television doesn't like politics very well, if you can infer that from the way they cover it.

I apologize for what the media has done.

Trump has taken it to a new level. He is now viewing the media as the 'opposition party,' in his own words. Consequently, media coverage of Trump has become that much more significant.

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.

Ignore Trump's tweets. Yes, it's unrealistic. But we would all be better off if the media reported them more rarely, reacted to them less strongly, and treated them with less alarm and more bemusement.

Do you see Fox News go after Republican officials all the time? No, you almost never see that. You see them do that to Trump administration officials almost never.

I think the media has some responsibility to bear for people becoming more conservative.

It is an honor to take the helm of 'Reliable Sources,' the very best of a very small number of programs about the media's role in society.

I have never quite grasped the worry about the power of the press. After all, it speaks with a thousand voices, in constant dissonance.

I think there are a lot of reasons to be critical of the media in America.

The biased left-wing media does what it wants. That's not going to define me or hamper me.

The press doesn't just cover presidential campaigns, they influence them by making arbitrary decisions about who is 'top tier' and merits coverage.

The legions of reporters who cover politics don't want to quit the clash and thunder of electoral combat for the dry duty of analyzing the federal budget. As a consequence, we have created the perpetual presidential campaign.

We in the press, by our power, can actually undermine leadership.

If there is a silver lining in the action of MSNBC against Keith Olbermann, it is that people will now pay more attention to the political role of corporate media in America.

The Petersons have not come forward in the press. Apparently they feel the media bears a large responsibility for Scott's conviction. It may be a while before we hear anything from them.

It still surprises me when I find something in any North Carolina newspaper that isn't mad at me about something.