Suzy Menkes Quotes

Journalists aren't supposed to be cheerleaders.

The good journalist is never objective. He is always neutral.

I don't know if I ever believed in the infallibility of a journalist's objectivity, but I definitely stopped flirting with the notion as a young adult.

When I was in journalism school, you were taught to be completely objective. But we don't see that anymore.

We journalists make it a point to know very little about an extremely wide variety of topics; this is how we stay objective.

Because appearing to be fair is part of being fair, most mainstream news organizations discourage marching for causes, displaying political bumper stickers or giving cash to candidates.

I don't know if there's such a thing as objectivity.

What people call impartiality may simply mean indifference, and what people call partiality may simply mean mental activity.

It's the nature of journalism to need to be close to your subjects. And either you're able to be tough on them, which a lot of us are, or you get in bed with them, and some people do.

I don't look for good-news stories or bad-news stories.

Every time you write anything, at least half your readers are going to disagree with you. A big part of sports writing is how you respond to that tension.

Be able to notice all the confusion between fact and opinion that appears in the news.

I want the news delivered unbiased. I thought that was the whole point with journalism.

Objective journalism and an opinion column are about as similar as the Bible and Playboy magazine.

Every truth has two sides; it is as well to look at both, before we commit ourselves to either.

I don't think fairness means that you give equal time to every point of view no matter how marginal. You weigh the sides, you do some truth-testing, you apply judgment to them.

It is necessary to judge accurately the things that rest on opinion

You could say that any book that takes a position is not fair, unless you keep saying, 'On the one hand, on the other...' and take a great deal of trouble to present both sides. That kind of journalism tends not to be very interesting.

I don't believe reporters are supposed to be the story. That's how I was trained.

Many times, when you do what I do or work in journalism in general, people try to not explicitly present their opinions on topics.

As a pundit, it's important to tell the viewer something they might not know, be unbiased and not sit on the fence.

There is no journalist without opinions, and there's no real objectivity, but we can strive toward it.

To go from politics to news, at least the subject matter is the same, even if the view is different.

I am the kind of person that takes everything as is and then look at it from the outside looking in.

This is 'Southland,' so we don't editorialize.