Deborah Howell Quotes

To newspapers and publishing houses I urge the use of fact over fiction, freedom of the press, and responsibility at all times.

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

The responsibility that I feel is to do as good a job as a journalist as I can possibly do.

Whenever you're reporting, there's always something you can't say or write, but the questions, you always want to get as close to that line as possible. You want to ask the tough questions.

A good journalist is not the one that writes what people say, but the one that writes what he is supposed to write.

In America we don’t apologize for opinions, that’s why we have a 1st Amendment. If we can’t discuss even controversial opinions in the pages of our newspapers, where are we going to do it?

A journalist covering politics, most of us are aware of the necessity to try to be sure we're unbiased in our reporting. That's one of the fundamentals of good journalism.

What we want is responsible journalism. We want to avoid bigotry.

In any event, the proper question isn't what a journalist thinks is relevant but what his or her audience thinks is relevant. Denying people information they would find useful because you think they shouldn't find it useful is censorship, not journalism.

Journalism can never be silent: that is its greatest virtue and its greatest fault. It must speak, and speak immediately, while the echoes of wonder, the claims of triumph and the signs of horror are still in the air.

The first duty of a newspaper is to be accurate. If it be accurate, it follows that it is fair.

If journalism is good, it is controversial, by its nature.

A good newspaper is never nearly good enough but a lousy newspaper is a joy forever.

It is the role of good journalism to take on powerful abusers, and when powerful abusers are taken on, there's always a bad reaction. So we see that controversy, and we believe that is a good thing to engage in.

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.

These cartoons are indeed offensive to the belief of Muslims. We all fully recognize and respect freedom of the press and expression, but it must be coupled with press responsibility. Inciting religious or ethnic hatreds in this manner is not acceptable.

These cartoons are an unnecessary abuse of freedom of speech.

The first duty of the Press is to obtain the earliest and most correct intelligence of the time, and instantly, by disclosing them to make them the common property of the nation.

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

During this course of administration, and in order to disturb it, the artillery of the press has been leveled against us, charged with whatsoever its licentiousness could devise or dare. These abuses of an institution so important to freedom and science are deeply to be regretted, inasmuch as they tend to lessen its usefulness and to sap its safety.

It is the business of the journalist … to stand in permanent Opposition.

Liberty of the press is a privilege to publish, with impunity, falsehood on matters of public concern, in the honest belief it is truth, with good motives, for justifiable ends

Turner, forget it. We don't go in for that kind of crap that you have back in New York -- of being obliged to print both sides. We're going to beat this son-of-a-bitch Sinclair any way we can. We're going to kill him.

A journalists's job is not to be balanced. It is to be accurate.

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.