Andrew Ferguson Quotes

Is there Gawker ethics? I mean, I guess there's Gawker ethics. It's a dangerous thing to talk about.

Rereading A.J. Liebling carries me happily back to an age when all good journalists knew they had plenty to be modest about, and were.

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.

Media doesn't like when other media gets their credentials pulled - that's not OK.

Journalism without a moral position is impossible. Every journalist is a moralist. It's absolutely unavoidable. A journalist is someone who looks at the world and the way it works, someone who takes a close look at things every day and reports what she sees, someone who represents the world, the event, for others. She cannot do her work without judging what she sees.

I am a journalist and, under the modern journalist's code of Olympian objectivity (and total purity of motive), I am absolved of responsibility. We journalists don't have to step on roaches. All we have to do is turn on the kitchen light and watch the critters scurry.

Speaking of the motto of the New York Times, "All the news that's fit to print:" It is hard to think of any group of seven words that have aroused more newspaper controversy.

American journalism (like the journalism of any other country) is predominantly paltry and worthless. Its pretensions are enormous, but its achievements are insignificant.

Journalists aren't supposed to be cheerleaders.

Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible.

Not all journalists are really journalists. They ask such stupid questions sometimes, especially the newer ones, and because... these people can't tell if you're joking around, you just can't have any sense of humour; you really can't.

I'm not going to make general comments about the British press.

I do think that there are gray lines of morality in a newsroom, when it comes to some stories. The best-intentioned journalist still has a difficult mission, to try to boil down people.

Journalism without a moral position is impossible. Every journalist is a moralist. It's absolutely unavoidable.

I don't think journalists should talk about whom they're voting for.

God, newspapers have been making up stories forever. This kind of trifling and fooling around is not a function of the New Journalism.

The essence of American journalism is vulgarity divested of truth.

Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people's vanity, ignorance or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse.

The most sacred cow of the press is the press itself

I don't want to defend rumors. It's certainly nothing new. The only development in recent years is the [lower] threshold at which news organizations will print rumors.

You hope the American people are fair. We recognize journalists have to kill somebody each week.

We need ethical journalism. There is also capacity limitations in journalism.

My journalistic heroes are Peter Jennings and Ted Koppel and Tim Russert and Edward R. Murrow, among others, because they were tough.

ESPN puts out anything for clicks now, it kind of seems like.

No honest journalist should be willing to describe himself or herseif as 'embedded.' To say, 'I'm an embedded journalist' is to say, 'I'm a government Propagandist.