Frank Church Quotes

As journalists, we cannot swallow the official line without question. We should challenge almost everything that dictators, presidents and officials say.

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.

You turn on the TV, and you see very bland interviews. Journalists in the United States are very cozy with power, very close to those in power.

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 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.

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

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.

I would never let myself knock out a journalist.

We have to protect all journalists, and journalists have to be allowed to do their jobs.

Nothing is more idealistic than a journalist on the defensive.

At Grozny TV, the line between journalism and government propaganda is traversed as often as a Manhattan crosswalk.

Clearly independent journalists - domestic journalists - run a high risk if they dare to take on serious investigative work.

A long life in journalism convinced me many presidents ago that there should be a large air space between a journalist and the head of a state.

In the U.K., journalists are a little bit more ruthless than in Denmark. I have a feeling the tabloid press in the U.K. is pretty harsh.

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 press, that distinguished appendage of public liberty … has been invariably prostituted …

While they shriek for "freedom of the press" when there is no slightest threat to that freedom, they deny to citizens that freedom from the press to which the decencies of life entitle them. They misrepresent, they distort, they color, they blackguard, they lie.

I deplore with you, the putrid state into which our newspapers have passed, and the malignity, the vulgarity, and mendacious spirit of those who write for them.... As vehicles of information, and a curb on our functionaries, they have rendered themselves useless, by forfeiting all title to belief.

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.

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

The media are the opposition party.

The job of media is the accountability of government.

We need a free press. We must have it. It's vital.

I think of journalists as being bullet-proof in a way.

I don't owe the media anything.