Lyndon B. Johnson Quotes

It used to be that a journalist covering the White House had trouble getting news because each person there worked for the same person, while in Congress they are all independent contractors and you could get news. But today, the White House Staff are all independent contractors and that is a great place to get news.

I've always felt privileged to cover the White House and to have that ringside seat to history

Do you know what White House correspondents call actors who pose as reporters? Anchors.

If I am communicating to my readers exactly what the White House believes on any certain issue, that's reporting to them an unvarnished, unfiltered version of what they - the Administration - believe.

I think that the press has a duty and an obligation to report on local government, state government, federal government - to be aggressive, to do its job. And its job is to report on whatever it's covering.

In journalism it is simpler to sound off than it is to find out. It is more elegant to pontificate than it is to sweat.

I am a hard-news journalist. That is what I do.

I was given a White House - well, you will have to ask the White House that. But I asked to attend the White House briefing because I was, you know, because I wanted to report on the activities there.

I think the press are good people; I think they're educated people.

I would say that President Roosevelt probably was more intimately in touch with the press corps at the White House than President Truman was.

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.

The function of the press in society is to inform, but its role in society is to make money.

The front pages of The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times are very important in shaping what other people think. They're like writing a memo to the White House.

Being a reporter is at the very core of a democracy, being a free person in a free society.

Th' newspaper does ivrything f'r us. It runs th' polis foorce an' th' banks, commands th' milishy, conthrols th' ligislachure, baptizes th' young, marries th' foolish, comforts th' afflicted, afflicts th' comfortable, buries th' dead an' roasts thim aftherward.

It’s hard to sometimes get information out of the government. It’s really hard. You can’t do it without asking tough questions.

The [London] Times has made many ministries.

In a world where we are all so much more interconnected, the ability to read the connections, and to connect the dots, is the real value added provided by a journalist.

The fact that a man is a newspaper reporter is evidence of some flaw in character.

The press are the chroniclers of history as it is made.

How do you know the news is reliable if you didn’t gather it yourself?

Our job [White House press secretaries] is to serve the interest of the President while recognizing the interests of the press.

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

Journalist, in my opinion, are mediators between the Information Age and our democracy.

It’s a lot easier and cheaper to have thumbsuckers and pundits on television than it is to have reporters and news bureaus around the world.