William Butler Yeats Quotes

Nothing is more idealistic than a journalist on the defensive.

When a reporter sits down at the typewriter, he's nobody's friend.

Journalists aren't supposed to be cheerleaders.

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

I'm very much in support of the free press, but the free press ought to be educational and informative. And I believe they have fallen down recently on that.

With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms.

Journalists hold themselves apart, and above, the common person. They have rules designed to ensure their objectivity and impartiality.

The press is a watchdog. Not an attack dog. Not a lapdog. A watchdog. Now, a watchdog can't be right all the time. He doesn't bark only when he sees or smells something that's dangerous. A good watchdog barks at things that are suspicious.

The truth is, I don't have any problem with journalists - I count some of them as friends - also some of my heroes are journalists, I'm a big fan of Robert Fisk - great people or crazy people who are prepared to stand up for what's right.

The second is the damage to the credibility and independence of a free press which may be caused by covert relationships with the U.S. journalists and media organizations.

As a journalist, one tends to think there's nothing off limits.

I happen to believe that any legitimate news organization in the world would do that interview. And if the United States is going to be a proponent of a free press, it has to walk the walk.

The chief danger which threatens the influence and honor of the press is the tendency of its liberty to degenerate into license.

As to the journalist himself, it is clear that to get a living he must write to order, that is, he must write in accordance with the views of his paper, in so far as he writes at all on current topics.

The most sacred cow of the press is the press itself

I think of journalists as being bullet-proof in a way.

There are not two sides to a story when one side is a lie. Journalists - and the rest of us - must stop giving equal time to things that don't have an opposing side.

As reporters, we not only deliver the news of the day. We must also defend the truth. And just because we are pro-truth doesn't mean we are anti-Trump.

I have great respect for the news and great respect for freedom of the press and all of that.

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 have so much more compassion for journalists and the work that they have to do, in order to do the jobs that they have to do. I am much more in awe of and am celebratory of great journalism when I see it, and I'm much more critical of bad journalism, or crap masquerading as journalism.

It's completely inappropriate. It's not journalism. It's opinion.

A big part of my book deals with the caliber of journalism. Our journalism in general is deplorable, and on elections in particular it's very ineffectual. There are a lot of problems, a lot of them having to do with to problems within the professional code of journalism, which defines its role as the regurgitation of what people in power say. Another big problem is that we allow people with money to basically buy what's talked about in campaigns through running TV ads.

Never trust a journalist.

With "Good Night, and Good Luck," I think it's kind of obvious what [Truman Capote]'s getting at there, and the importance of how it's playing out today, that is journalism doing, are the journalists doing their job, are they being the other checks and balances in our country that the way that obviously Edward R. Murrow was back then.