Rush Limbaugh Quotes

People call me for interviews on censorship type topics all the time, like that Gannette interview.I don't hold myself out to be an authority on it, but the reason they call me is that they know that I'll at least open my mouth, and give an opinion, whereas other people will play it safe, and won't say anything, because they don't want to offend anybody.

Secrets don't stay secrets very long, even when journalists decide to censor themselves.

It is the responsibility of journalists to be ethical. Religion is a very sensitive issue, and I think no truly professional cartoonist in the world would ever try to pick on a religion like this. There’s an informal code of ethics among cartoonists in the media, and it includes two kinds of censorship: one is self-censorship; the other is professional censorship. Religion is one of the very important things that we should respect and not criticize …. We cannot tolerate any disparagement of the Prophet.

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

Journalism is a giant catapult set in motion by pygmy hatreds.

Once you “volunteer” and engage in self-censorship something happens to your conscience.

Junk journalism is the evidence of a society that has got at least one thing right, that there should be nobody with the power to dictate where responsible journalism begins

If printers (publishers) only printed that which everyone liked, there would be very little printed

There is always sleaze in the news. And you know what? The news is always a combination of things that are interesting and things that are important.

Despite what The Wall Street Journal says, our awards are the best-kept secret in America, with the possible exception of what George W. Bush did in the '70s.

Like every other industry or institution, the journalism world is populated by the petty and fearful, in addition to the courageous and brilliant.

Nobody in media and journalism knows more about 'deep state' than I do.

Sensationalism is entertaining, but substance is what matters.

[Alan Berg's] memory haunts many people, even those who never heard him on the radio, because his death could be read as a message: Be cautious, be prudent, be bland, never push anybody, never say what you really think, offer yourself as a hostage to the weirdos even before they make the first move. These days, a lot of people are opposed to the newfound popularity of 'trash television,' and no doubt they are right, and the hosts of these shows are shameless controversy-mongers. But at least they are not intimidated. Of what use is freedom of speech to those who fear to offend?

I found out - the paper used to go to bed on Tues - on Monday. I found out that on Monday nights, the editors would cut out - literally cut out passages, sometimes whole paragraphs, of some of the writers that might possibly offend blacks, lesbians, gays, radicals. And I wrote a couple of columns about that. And they're - of course, they were annoyed that I had written about it, but, I mean, it - another example - and [my wife Margot] always also conjured that.

I'd known the people at Rolling Stone for a while. I'd gone to them with a piece I'd done on Beirut for Vanity Fair that Vanity Fair didn't want to publish, because they said I was making fun of death... This was Tina Brown.But they paid me for it. So I've got this big chunk of a piece, and Rolling Stone liked it, but they thought it was a little dated. But then they called me back and asked me to do a similar piece about the Turks and Caicos Islands, where the whole government had been arrested for dope smuggling. That was fun.

If you use social media right, you will piss people off. It's actually recommended!

If the media spotlight affects my work or represses what I want to say in the future, then it is bad.

A lot of the people involved in the media are very serious, honest people, and they will tell you, and I think they are right, that they are not being forced to write anything... What they don't tell you, and are maybe unaware of, is that they are allowed to write freely because their beliefs conform to the... standard doctrinal system, and then, yes, they are allowed to write freely and are not coerced.

The faculty of attention has utterly vanished from the Anglo-Saxon mind, extinguished at its source by the big bayad?re of journalism, of the newspaper and the picture magazine which keeps screaming, "Look at me." Illustrations, loud simplifications... bill poster advertising ? only these stand a chance.

It's kinda ridiculous what you can't say nowadays. You really can't say anything you believe! I think it's fricking ridiculous how sensitive everyone is to everything, how much things are frowned upon. How much stuff will cost you nowadays. I think it's fricking ridiculous that we can't - there's certain topics that you can't really say how you feel about.

The media will make a controversy out of anything, if they can.

I'm thankful that we live in a crassly commercial, polarized culture, so media jackals like me have a lot of work to do.

There was an op-ed piece in The New York Times by an evolutionary biologist or somebody - which was a curious place for the opinion to come from - and he said that there's no such thing as a completely free, uncensored medium, that people censor themselves all the time, in deference to hurting other people's feelings, or offending other groups, or in their own, not to provoke a fight. And you do self-censor certain things, and it's not necessarily a bad thing. That's just the way human social interaction works.

Foreign news is considered an expletive. Thoughtfully written analysis is out, 'live pops' are in. 'Action Jackson' is the cry. Hire lookers, not writers. Do powder puff, not probing interviews. Stay away from controversial subjects. Kiss ass, move with the mass, and for heaven and rating's sake, don't make anybody mad- - certainly not anybody you're covering, and especially not the mayor, the governor, the senator, the president or the vice-president or anybody in a position of power. Make nice, not news.