Holman W. Jenkins Jr. Quotes

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.

Journalism is not a precise science, it's a crude art

In economics, the majority is always wrong.

The few ... being closely combined ... inploy no printers [journalists and writers] but those that will adhear strictly to their vuies and interests.

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.

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

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

The enemy of individuality is groupthink.

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 hired journalist, I thought, ought to realize that he is partly in the entertainment business and partly in the advertising business - advertising either goods, or a cause, or a government. He just has to make up his mind whom he wants to entertain, and what he wants to advertise.

An important thing to remember about the press is there is no ideological bias.

Most people in the media aren't bad people. They just go along to get along and it's the group culture and the conditioning. As soon as they see that things are wrong, some of them will start speaking out and making a stand.

The women all had big minds because they were big animals, but they didn't use them for this reason: unusual ideas could make enemies and the women, if they were going to achieve any sort of comfort and safety, needed all the friends they could get. So, in the interest of survival they trained themselves to be agreeing machines. All their minds had to do was to discover what other people were thinking and then they thought it too.

On social media there's this thing where on many occasions, there's a single proscribed way of acting. Like if somebody dies, everyone has to say "R.I.P.! R.I.P.!" Basically they're saying, "Don't hurt me, I'm a good person."

'He who seeks may easily get lost himself. It is a crime to go apart and be alone.' Thus speaks the herd.

All isolation is wrong so say the herd. And long didst thou belong to the herd.

You can always count on the New York Times to cut your legs off.

I've always been more interested in the content of our newspapers, political positions day to day, the thrill of communicating with people through words that I am in the pure business aspects.

The majority have no other reason for their opinions than that they are the fashion.

Those who talk about individuality the most are the ones who most object to deviation, and in a few years it may be the other way around. Some day everybody will just think what they want to think, and then everybody will probably be thinking alike; that seems to be what is happening.

The press is, almost without exception, corrupt.

They're all gonna be considered kooks and freaks and so forth. My point here is that many in the Drive-By Media, the faces that you see (sigh), they're just are repeating what's presented to them. They're repeating what they hear when they talk to other like-minded people.

Everybody's private motto: It's better to be popular than right.

Everything was becoming allegorical, understood by the group mind, and especially this: "You're either on the bus...or off the bus.

I think any reasonable person knows which reporters to eliminate.