Morris Ernst Quotes

The media is like the terrain and weather. It is a fact; it's nothing you can change. You have to learn to deal with it. And it isn't bad or good, it's just there. I don't think we should put limits on the press, unless it's for security reasons or for reasons of risk in the case of an operation. We value freedom of the press. It's something we are fighting for. It's part of the constitutional rights that we swear our allegiance to. We just have to accept it and learn to deal with it in a right way, and give and take.

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

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

The political misrepresentation of facts is one of the incidents of a free press in every free country.

Journalists follow authority as sharks follow a liner, dining on the scraps that are thrown overboard.

Freedom of the press, printing, publication and mass media shall be guaranteed. Censorship on newspapers is forbidden as well as notifying, suspending or cancelling them by administrative methods. In a state of emergency or in time of war a limited censorship may be imposed on the newspapers, publications and mass media in matters related to public safety or purposes of national security in accordance with the law.

The most sacred cow of the press is the press itself

The 1st Amendment does not mandate that the press be accurate.

So far as the Constitution goes .. the press is free to do battle against secrecy and deception in government. But the press cannot expect from the Constitution that they will succeed…. The Constitution itself is neither a Freedom of Information Act or an Official Secrets Act.

I have tried to write about this matter without any improper bias, but of course we are all cowards about newspapers who tyrannize over us all.

A free press may be good or bad, but without freedom a press can only be bad.

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

As far as the media is concerned, I wouldn't shoot anything down.

The press is a watchdog. Not an attack dog. Not a lapdog. A watchdog. Now, a watchdog can't be right all the time. He doesn't bark only when he sees or smells something that's dangerous. A good watchdog barks at things that are suspicious.

I happen to believe that any legitimate news organization in the world would do that interview. And if the United States is going to be a proponent of a free press, it has to walk the walk.

We believe that the remedy to any harm resulting from press freedom lies in press freedom itself.

I respect the press. The press and the media are a very useful watchdog to check the power of the government.

We in the media should be breaking the news and not making the news.

The concept that the press is an organ of government policy dies hard.

We do not need a censorship of the press. We have a censorship by the press.

The press must be free; it has always been so and much evil has been corrected by it. If Government finds itself annoyed by it, let it examine its own conduct and it will find the cause.

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.

The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.

As to the journalist himself, it is clear that to get a living he must write to order, that is, he must write in accordance with the views of his paper, in so far as he writes at all on current topics.