Chuck Palahniuk Quotes

The one function that TV news performs very well is that when there is no news we give it to you with the same emphasis as if it were.

Sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there without a book, magazine, newspaper, profit-and-loss sheet or rating book to distract you—and keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland.

Their constant yelping about a free press means, with a few honorable exceptions, freedom to peddle scandal, crime, sex, sensationalism, hate, innuendo and the political and financial uses of propaganda. A newspaper is a business out to make money through advertising revenue. That is predicated on the circulation and you know what circulation depends on.

Frankly, many Fox shows are running away from the news rather than reporting on it.

Most of the things I read from journalists are, you know, a little bit simplified and easy.

I would like television to produce some itching pills rather than this endless outpouring of tranquilizers.

I know of no human being who has a better time than an eager and energetic young reporter.

I think cable television is wobbling and I think people aren't going to forget what happened - because you had a situation where one of the candidates was hated, not just disagreed with, hated. You can't have that. If you hate somebody, I've got to step aside or I need tell the audience look, I hate this person. You know I'm not going to give you an objective view of them. But they didn't do that about Donald Trump.

I invite you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air . . . and keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that you will observe a great wasteland.

David Axelrod says we need to inspire more young people to be journalists? How about inspiring journalists to be journalists?

No reporter of my generation, whatever his genius, ever really rated spats and a walking stick until he had covered both a lynching and a revolution.

I do worry about the press and a President Trump. You know, I think it's dangerous the entire de-legitimization that he's engaged in against all of the media because the people, as much as it's fun to hate us, they do need us. You know, they need good, strong skeptical journalists to be covering whoever it is, whether it's Barack Obama or President Donald Trump.

A lot of television tends to assume that audiences don't have the attention span or the IQ to follow a lot of stuff.

Asking the question whether the mainstream media has a liberal or conservative bias is like asking whether al Qaeda uses too much oil in their hummus. I might think they use a little bit too much oil; some people might think it's a little dry. But the problem with al Qaeda is they want to kill us. And the problem with the mainstream media is that it has these other biases that are much more important.

There is a middlebrow snobbery in America that praises everything on public television and disdains everything on the commercial networks as a blight.

It's so obvious The Weather Channel is pro hurricane. Fair and balanced my ass.

Being a journalist seemed the ideal way of both having a job and experiencing the world, especially for anyone with a sense of adventure.

TV has gotten so boring that the only thing I watch is the news.

Nothing is covered adequately by the BBC. The BBC has become the biggest disappointment - they're just so terrified. And in a way it's not their fault: the parties have used them as a political football.

So that all the people who say, you know, "All the media hates America." A lot of the media does hate America but this is a case of, actually, the press doing its best, I think, to do the right by national security. So good for them.

Everybody wrings their hands about Fox News. You know, "fair and balanced? Why, that's snide!" Yeah, okay, maybe they're not fair and balanced, but CNN used to have the slogan "You Can Depend on CNN". Guess what? I watch it, no you can't. So what's the difference?

Many journalists become very defensive when you suggest to them that they are anything but impartial and objective. The problem with those words "impartiality" and "objectivity" is that they have lost their dictionary meaning. They've been taken over. "Impartiality" and "objectivity" now mean the establishment point of view.

In the founding days of the Constitution, the purpose of the media was to make sure that powerful government officials were held accountable. It really was. I mean, it was founders who hated the media like everybody else hates the media, but they understood the role they played. This media long ago when it comes to Hillary Clinton/Bill Clinton and the Democrat Party? No, no, no, no. They're the Democrat Party now. There is no media.

The problem the cable channels have is they have to fill 24 hours. That's a terrible thing. We only do that on the biggest stories. The thing is there has happened to be a lot o

Being a reporter is as much a diagnosis as a job description.