Clay Shirky Quotes

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

Flaws and all, I believe the free press is our country's most important institution - one I am more than happy to defend. One I did, in fact, defend for 37 years.

I think journalism is important.

Journalists have no choice but to fight back because if they don't, they will become irrelevant.

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

Newspapers . . . serve as chimnies to carry off noxious vapors and smoke.

I wrote newspaper articles professionally for seven years, and I love newspapers. I'm hopeful that new business models will emerge that allow the newspaper culture to genuinely thrive in the digital age.

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

The most important responsibility we have as journalists is to question those who are in power. I honestly believe that.

The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm.

I'm 68 and a half years old; I grew up with newspapers; I love newspapers; I love the news business. I started CNN; I'm a journalist and proud of it.

Journalism talk is part of the nonstop background noise of American life.

The quality of our journalism will make or break our industry, not the recession.

CBS fought very hard on this because it believed and believes that there's a principle at stake here. The principle is that Dan Rather doesn't work for the police, and that people that speak to Dan Rather understand that he's a journalist and not a police agent.

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.

Thank God we have a press that tells us what you guys are doing.

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

Journalist, in my opinion, are mediators between the Information Age and our democracy.

The media are the opposition party.

Journalism is what we need to make democracy work.

No one needs to tell me about the importance of the free press in a democratic society or about the essential role a newspaper can play in its community.

Part of my job is to read the paper, watch C-Span and show things that haven't been shown or were buried.

Any of us who've been newspapermen for a long time hate generalizations.

News may not be very profitable anymore, but it sure is popular.

The most important newspapers in this country need to exist. Our democracy needs them. Life as we know it would be unthinkable without them.