A. J. Liebling Quotes

In these times we fight for ideas and newspapers are our fortress.

More and more, I find that the news reads like a particularly random game of Consequences.

Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.

I'm not a communist, just a media theorist.

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.

Fair and balanced is doublespeak for bite-out-chunks-of-truth until only irrelevancy is left, byte-sized, entertaining irrelevancy

The press today is an army with carefully organized weapons, the journalists its officers, the readers its soldiers. But, as in every army, the soldier obeys blindly, and the war aims and operating plans change without his knowledge. The reader neither knows nor is supposed to know the purposes for which he is used and the role he is to play. There is no more appalling caricature of freedom of thought. Formerly no one was allowed to think freely; now it is permitted, but no one is capable of it any more. Now people want to think only what they are supposed to want to think, and this they consider freedom.

The good news does not make the front pages. The bad news does make the front pages.

News and entertainment are getting dangerously intertwined.

Communism has been so thoroughly exposed in this country that it has been crippled as a political force. Free speech has destroyed it as an effective political party.

The journalistic traits that are valued on TV and radio talk shows are destructive to democracy.

Newspapers form public opinion, but public opinion also influences newspapers. The general masses are not like horses that can be tamed and trained to do their masters bidding.

There has been a reflex throughout the history of modern news: When the country goes to war, so do the major news organizations. They consider it ‘patriotic.’ But it is dubious patriotism that abandons citizens in unnecessary ignorance of critical information…The before-and-after picture of U.S. officialdom presents a stark lesson of the tragedies of war and propaganda repeated in the major media.

A Marxist could not open a newspaper without finding on every page confirming evidence for his interpretation of history; not only in the news, but also in its presentation — which revealed the class bias of the paper — and especially of course what the paper did not say.

Editorialists who tell downright lies in order to advance their own agendas do more to discredit the press than all the censors in the world.

It’s a lot easier and cheaper to have thumbsuckers and pundits on television than it is to have reporters and news bureaus around the world.

Reporters were all part of the war effort. They went along with it, and not only that, they abetted it.…It is in the things not mentioned that the untruth lies.…They wrote only a part of the war

The newspapers! Sir, they are the most villainous — licentious — abominable — infernal — Not that I ever read them — no — I make it a rule never to look into a newspaper.

There evolved a new media definition of civility that privileged "balance" over truth-telling—even when one side was lying. It's a real and profound change.

Today the greatest evil—and therefore the most immediate—is the press.

We suffer quite as much from exaggerated, hysterical, and untruthful statements in the press as from any wrongdoing by businessmen or politicians.

There is a bias in the press for facts over fiction.

There are comrades without elementary knowledge of politics, and this brings them to entertain absurd ideas, such as the idea that we live in a time where critical journalism remains a necessity.

The Newspaper wants me to by neutral with respect to Germany, as if anyone could be neutral in this war.

Is journalism a profession that serves the public by maintaining high standards, or is it a social construct that should be redesigned to directly serve certain social goods? Some argue that all journalism involves bias, either hidden or revealed. But it is one thing to say that objectivity and fairness are ultimately unreachable. It is another to cease grasping for them. That would be a world of purely private truths, in which the boldest liars and demagogues would thrive.