Dana Milbank Quotes

The essence of American journalism is vulgarity divested of truth.

Journalism, as practiced by some, has become something akin to professional wrestling—something to watch rather than believe.

What you say about the newspapers is very true ... They are indeed a curious compound of truth and untruth. I am so used to newspaper nonsense and attacks that I do not mind it in the least....

There evolved a new media definition of civility that privileged "balance" over truth-telling—even when one side was lying. It's a real and profound change.

A journalists's job is not to be balanced. It is to be accurate.

Is journalism a profession that serves the public by maintaining high standards, or is it a social construct that should be redesigned to directly serve certain social goods? Some argue that all journalism involves bias, either hidden or revealed. But it is one thing to say that objectivity and fairness are ultimately unreachable. It is another to cease grasping for them. That would be a world of purely private truths, in which the boldest liars and demagogues would thrive.

I reject the idea that journalists are messengers of the truth. It’s arrogant. I think journalism is a search for the little relative truths that at best keep us relatively sane.

Once we thought, journalists and readers alike, that if we put together enough 'facts' and gave them a fast stir, we would come up with something that, at least by the standards of short-order cooks, could be called the truth.

Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle.

News and entertainment are getting dangerously intertwined.

A labouring man ... read and study halfe his time, and then be at a loss to know what is true and what not. Thus the few have almost ruined the Libberty of the press.

How do you know the news is reliable if you didn’t gather it yourself?

We are a better country because the press gets 1000 facts right every day.

What reporters may increasingly see as a necessity, readers see as a scourge.

Hannity does not recognize real journalism. He opposes real journalism.

I am not anti-media at all. But the media, the news anywhere in the world, is based on drama.

It's all storytelling, you know. That's what journalism is all about.

I never, ever have seen media this way. It's almost indescribable. Making up stories, refusing to run real stories. It's making themselves look like utter fools. There's no journalism, there is no media. There's pure, full-fledged advocacy here.

We take what's shown on television as the truth, and it isn't. News isn't even the truth on television. If you look up the definition of what news is, it isn't that what we're watching on the new - it's entertainment.

News isn't even the truth on television.

People who think there is something pedestrian about journalism are just ignorant.

Ultimately journalism has changed... partisanship is very much a part of journalism now.

I have yet to meet very many people in the press who are really, truly interested in writing a good story or getting at the truth. Most press people, when they come into an article, have an angle that they want already, so they need points to support that angle, whatever the angle may be.

I think journalism gets measured by the quality of information it presents, not the drama or the pyrotechnics associated with us.

I don't believe that there's such a thing as objectivity in much of journalism, but I think there is a serious effort to and a regard for facts and into taking that stuff seriously is very important to the public discourse and it's very important to democracy.