Bertrand Russell Quotes

There are those who blame the Press, but in this I think they are mistaken. The Press is such as the public demands, and the public demands bad newspapers because it has been badly educated.

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.

It’s always a danger when an institution like the press becomes disconnected from the people.

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

I used to think the press was a necessary evil and now I don't think it is. I think it's something you choose.

The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything. Except what is worth knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesman-like habits, supplies their demands.

The press ... is but the servant of human intellect and its ministry is for good or evil, according to the character of those who direct it. The press is a mill that grinds all that is put into its hopper. Fill the hopper with poisoned grain and it will grind it to meal, but there is death in the bread.

I'm very much in support of the free press, but the free press ought to be educational and informative. And I believe they have fallen down recently on that.

The Petersons have not come forward in the press. Apparently they feel the media bears a large responsibility for Scott's conviction. It may be a while before we hear anything from them.

People everywhere confuse what they read in newspapers with news.

Given what the media have put the country through this past decade, it must come as a surprise to most Americans that the press has a code of ethics.

I think the media needs a little criticizing now, as it did in the '80s, don't you?

The most important service rendered by the press and the magazines is that of educating people to approach printed matter with distrust.

The smarter the journalists are, the better off society is. For to a degree, people read the press to inform themselves - and the better the teacher, the better the student body.

But particularly when the media profess to strive toward objectivity, gatekeepers play a crucial role in helping people navigate the news to make educated political decisions.

I read the papers like everybody else, so I don't complain about what they print.

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.

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

If this newspaper pestilence shall continue for fifty years more, the intelligence of our people will be destroyed.... Hold fast and zealously, therefore, to the slogan I now ask you to make your own: hatred and contempt, death and destruction, of the press of today.

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.

Junk journalism is the evidence of a society that has got at least one thing right, that there should be nobody with the power to dictate where responsible journalism begins

There is a power in our land, irresponsible, corrupt and malicious—‘the press,’ which has created the intense feelings of hostility that has arrayed the two parts of the country against each other, which must be curbed and brought within the just limits of reason and law, before we can have peace in America. We can deal with armies who have a visible and tangible existence, but it will require tact and skill and courage to clip the wings of this public enemy.

We in the media accept the responsibility of what we do.

Newspapers are the schoolmasters of the common people.

In Britian we have a free press. It's not a pretty press, but it's free. The people who can't bear the Daily Mail, they say: 'you should ban it'. No, no, no, no, you don't ban it... you don't buy it.