Tom Brokaw Quotes

I never, ever have seen media this way. It's almost indescribable. Making up stories, refusing to run real stories. It's making themselves look like utter fools. There's no journalism, there is no media. There's pure, full-fledged advocacy here.

No longer is there a quest for the truth so much as there is this apparent need to present both sides of an issue even if one is nothing but lies and distortions.

I operate on the principle that the mass media will never be accurate. They never have been. When did yellow journalism begin? After all, their basic principle is, simplify and exaggerate.

I have never witnessed a concerted effort by any news organization to take a stand one way or the other on a political issue, to damage one particular party or help another.

I have yet to meet very many people in the press who are really, truly interested in writing a good story or getting at the truth. Most press people, when they come into an article, have an angle that they want already, so they need points to support that angle, whatever the angle may be.

The news as entertainment is the real danger, because the truth or accuracy of what it is reporting becomes irrelevant.

The thing that bothers me about journalism is the false equivalency we sometimes place on certain issues.

Criticism is nonsense. TV shows and newspapers just want to fill the space.

I think everyone knows the news has become ridiculous. It's entertainment driven.

People think they're getting objective information, but they're not. They're getting news wrapped up in opinion.

But in the right-wing media, they do have a right-wing bias. And they also have an agenda. So their agenda is: we're an adjunct of the Republican Party, and we're going push that agenda every day, and, as you say, brand these stories that help further the right-wing cause.

Television news is now entertainment, and the stories are being written by the people that have a special interest in them.

This trend of reporting process over substance is unfortunate, if omnipresent. Even worse is the media's inability - or unwillingness - to fact-check Republicans who are angry about the Democrats trying to debate and vote on Iraq policy.

You get to a point where the factual adjudication doesn't matter because there are all these other outlets that are far less responsible, all talking about the ad, some of which have a political reason for promoting it.

We take what's shown on television as the truth, and it isn't. News isn't even the truth on television. If you look up the definition of what news is, it isn't that what we're watching on the new - it's entertainment.

I had to learn early on that where conservatives are concerned, the truth about them is the last thing anybody wants to report. It's the lies and distortions, the mischaracterizations, the character assassinations, that people want to report.

News isn't even the truth on television.

Ultimately journalism has changed... partisanship is very much a part of journalism now.

News represents another form of advertising, not liberal propaganda.

The mainstream media has its own agenda. They do not want to print the facts. They have an agenda, they have a slant, they have a bias. It is outrageous to me.

Journalism, as practiced by some, has become something akin to professional wrestling—something to watch rather than believe.

Too often reporters covering scientific debates give fringe views equal weight in a misguided attempt to achieve balance.

The expressions of newspapers, like those of orators, could not be accepted without allowance, for they aimed at producing some desired effect, and said either more or less than the truth.

The essence of American journalism is vulgarity divested of truth.

There evolved a new media definition of civility that privileged "balance" over truth-telling—even when one side was lying. It's a real and profound change.