Dave Barry Quotes

I think political correctness is a moving line.

I am satisfied that all politicians were meant to be journalists and all journalists meant to be politicians.

There is much to be said in favour of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.

Journalism is a way of voicing opinion, of participating in the political, social, or cultural debate.

Our Republic and its press will rise or fall together.

The fact is that in a way, journalists become a kind of default in the system when you don't have substantive two-party back-and-forth inside of the government.

Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

The newspapers, magazines and other journals of the country, it is safe to say, have shed and continue to shed, more light on the public and business affairs of, the nation than any other instrumentality of public; and since informed public opinion is the most potent of all restraints upon misgovernment, the suppression or abridgment of the publicity afforded by a free press cannot be regarded otherwise than with grave concern.

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.

Then there is the newspaper press, that huge engine for making the political test final.

The highest reach of a news-writer is an empty reasoning on policy, and vain conjectures on the public management.

Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors

Whatever may be said about the power of the press, it is undeniable that it can set the entire public thinking and talking about any topic ...

Our job is to bash the President.

I think politics is always about dialogue. I think journalism ranges from dialogue to monologue, and there are times when different poles are necessary.

On the whole, it seems to me that probably the American press is doing a better job of this mediation, so to speak, between the people and the administration than the press of any other country.

The hired journalist, I thought, ought to realize that he is partly in the entertainment business and partly in the advertising business - advertising either goods, or a cause, or a government. He just has to make up his mind whom he wants to entertain, and what he wants to advertise.

the heaviest restriction upon the freedom of public opinion is not the official censorship of the Press, but the unofficial censorship by a Press which exists not so much to express opinion as to manufacture it.

I've always been more interested in the content of our newspapers, political positions day to day, the thrill of communicating with people through words that I am in the pure business aspects.

People who are against hate are not a fringe minority, not even a silent majority, but are a silenced majority, silenced by the corporate media.

The media is tremendously important for all governments that are able to communicate through the it. It doesn't mean there is a balance of editorial opinion that favors what you are doing or that the opposition doesn't have its voice, but you have to be able to effectively communicate your story through the media.

The newspaper that obstructs the law on a trivial pretext, for money's sake, is a dangerous enemy to the public weal. That awful power, the public opinion of a nation, is created in America by a horde of ignorant, self-complacent simpletons who failed at ditching and shoemaking and fetched up in journalism on their way to the poorhouse.

You can have no wise laws nor free enforcement of wise laws unless there is free expression of the wisdom of the people -- and, alas, their folly with it. But if there is freedom, folly will die of its own poison, and the wisdom will survive.

Talk radio is running America. We have to deal with that problem.

To be honest, politics is so weird. I think it's more heavy than religion.