Ken Auletta Quotes

With media companies today owned and sponsored by large corporations, it is difficult to know whether the news can be trusted.

We talk about a free press. These people hide, they make a lot of money off the media. They hide behind the slogans of free press, and then they can come out with crap like that. It's just garbage. It's insulting to the readers.

Gail didn't want me commenting on the opinion pages. I was hired by the news department and, despite the rabid assertions of the Times' enemies and detractors, the two really have nothing to do with each other.

The biggest problem in rock journalism is that often the writer's main motivation is to become friends with the band. They're not really journalists; they're people who want to be involved in rock and roll.

If I'd written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people - including me - would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.

I don't like the American media - particularly Fox.

Fear rules almost every newsroom in the country.

Journalists are accused of being lapdogs when they don't ask the hard questions, but then accused of being rude when they do. Good thing we have tough hides.

If I had my choice I would kill every reporter in the world, but I am sure we would be getting reports from Hell before breakfast.

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

To say that the newspaper press represents public opinion is to administer insult to intelligent men. It is the property of speculators, political leaders, large contractors and railway directors.

When there is a conflict between a [network] corporation and the needs of it’s news division, the corporate interest will win out.

It tends to be overlooked that many people are indirectly affected by thoughtless and cruel journalism.

I think that there are some in the media who have an overinflated view of their mission.

We need journalists to be fearless and hold power to account.

Media is set up to give information to the people - at least that's what it says. But we all know in the U.S. that media is a capitalistic system, people are getting paid to write things, they have bosses and editors, and they have bosses, and they put pressure on people to write intriguing stories that catch the eye.

The U.S. corporate media, otherwise known as the "free press," is that hollow pillar on which contemporary American democracy rests.

We define journalism in America as the business and practice of presenting the news of the day in the interest of economic privilege.

The notion that journalism can regularly produce a product that violates the fundamental interests of media owners and advertisers ... is absurd.

Very rarely are you going to see the large shareholder or CEO of a corporation march into a newsroom and say, "Cover this story, don't cover that." It's a much more subtle process. The professional code adapts, but what we try to see, is how commercial and corporate pressure shape both the professional code and the sorts of things that are considered legitimate journalism and illegitimate journalism.

U.S. journalists I don't think are very courageous. They tend to go along with the government's policy domestically and internationally. To question is seen as being unpatriotic, or potentially subversive.

Journalism is the protection between people and any sort of totalitarian rule. That's why my hero, admittedly a flawed one, is a journalist.

The Congressional leaders set the agenda for journalism; it's not the other way around.

We need a free media, not just freedom of speech.

Publishing is a business, but journalism never was and is not essentially a business. Nor is it a profession.