Fatima Mernissi Quotes

Make the paper interesting.

The value of the writing is not in what you publish but in its consequences. If you set out to describe reality, then the influence of the writing is upon reality

You're going to run into a great deal of opinions. I think that's just fertile ground for us. What else would you want to write a show about than something that is that much of a pressure cooker, that has that much influence and impact? We're going to run into a lot of different opinions, but it's inspiring to me that newsmen and newswomen have reached out and said how thrilled they are with what we're doing.

I've been leading newsrooms for a while now and it's been an honor serving as Editor in Chief of N.J., but I really think that my best shot at moving the needle in politics is by getting close to it - by reading, reporting, tweeting and writing.

The press is like a big bass, you just stick a hook in their mouth and they'll take it.

The front pages of The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times are very important in shaping what other people think. They're like writing a memo to the White House.

Though the pen is mightier than the sword, the sword speaks louder and stronger at any given moment.

Greeley does the thinking for the whole West at $2 per year for his paper.

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.

Every newspaper lives by appealing to a particular public. It can only go ahead of its times if it carries its public with it. Success in journalism depends on understanding the public.

'...all the faults of the age come from Christianity and journalism

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.

Th' newspaper does ivrything f'r us. It runs th' polis foorce an' th' banks, commands th' milishy, conthrols th' ligislachure, baptizes th' young, marries th' foolish, comforts th' afflicted, afflicts th' comfortable, buries th' dead an' roasts thim aftherward.

There is much to be said in favour of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.

History is not made of up major media headlines and daily blogs and attacks.

How united would the United States be without its newspapers?

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.

The fourth estate which if not well looked to, will turn us all out of doors.

This man here [Walter Lippmann] is the greatest journalist in the world, and he's a friend of mine.

Then there is the newspaper press, that huge engine for making the political test final.

Journalism is now not only reflecting what is happening, it is affecting what is happening. Governments all over the world watch CNN.

Many a public figure has come to imitate the journalism which describes him.

The United States is the only nation in the world whose entire culture was formed entirely in the age of print.

Newspapers at that time did not necessarily try to flatter those in power. Rather, they wrote to please readers. I may sound evasive. but there certainly existed some kind of mechanism that aggravated the situation through subtle interactions between newspapers and the public. Readers were waiting for articles reporting the exploits of the victorious Imperial Forces, Newspapers indulged themselves in a competition to appear more patriotic and to see who could print the most articles urging and exalting victory. Newspaper companies cooperated through the dispatch of entertainers, calls for patriotic songs, campaigns for contributions to build more airplanes, and various other ways. The heavy responsibility that the newspapers bear is second only to that of the government.

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.