Matthew Cooper Quotes

The job of the press is to encourage debate, not to supply the public with information.

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

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.

Given what the media have put the country through this past decade, it must come as a surprise to most Americans that the press has a code of ethics.

I used to think the press was a necessary evil and now I don't think it is. I think it's something you choose.

I respect the press. The press and the media are a very useful watchdog to check the power of the government.

When the crisis at the core of our nation’s political decline is a direct attack on the truth, the institution that should take the lead in confronting and correcting that danger is the press.

The media is like the terrain and weather. It is a fact; it's nothing you can change. You have to learn to deal with it. And it isn't bad or good, it's just there. I don't think we should put limits on the press, unless it's for security reasons or for reasons of risk in the case of an operation. We value freedom of the press. It's something we are fighting for. It's part of the constitutional rights that we swear our allegiance to. We just have to accept it and learn to deal with it in a right way, and give and take.

Media creates awareness [and] ensures transparency and accountability.

The Press is such as the public demands, and the public demands bad newspapers because it has been badly educated.

If you don't trust the media, they are not going to trust you, and if they don't trust you, it's hard for the public to trust you.

I have never quite grasped the worry about the power of the press. After all, it speaks with a thousand voices, in constant dissonance.

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

I think the media needs a little criticizing now, as it did in the '80s, don't you?

The media does play a vital role in our democracy, and if we cannot depend on journalistic ethics, the nation's in trouble.

I am not here to accuse the media of anything.

I respect very much the role of the media in our society; I think they can be very, very helpful. They serve as a very useful check, sort of a watchdog over the actions of the government, and I respect that.

The media is absolutely essential to the functioning of a democracy. It's not our job to cozy up to power. We're supposed to be the check and balance on government.

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.

We in the media should be breaking the news and not making the news.

I apologize for what the media has done.

The press ... is but the servant of human intellect and its ministry is for good or evil, according to the character of those who direct it. The press is a mill that grinds all that is put into its hopper. Fill the hopper with poisoned grain and it will grind it to meal, but there is death in the bread.

Burke said there were three estates in Parliament; but in the reporter's gallery yonder, there sat a fourth estate more important far than they all.

We do not need a censorship of the press. We have a censorship by the press.

Arab media is market driven like the American media. It does not so much shape public opinion as much as it reflects it.