Masha Gessen Quotes

The relationship between press and politician - protected by the Constitution and designed to be happily adversarial - becomes sour, raw and confrontational.

Democracies die in darkness.... I don't realluy think that President Trump really believes that the press is the "enemy of the people"

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

After 9/11, many of the most important news outlets in America abdicated their role as a check to power - the journalistic responsibility to challenge the excesses of government - for fear of being seen as unpatriotic and punished in the market during a period of heightened nationalism.

The Defense Department's plan to ban newspaper reporters from pool coverage of military operations is incredible. It reveals the administration to be out of touch with journalism, reality and the First Amendment.

The violation of press freedoms has been egregious under this administration, even as the press fetes President Obama as an honest and effective commander-in-chief.

I respect very much the role of the media in our society; I think they can be very, very helpful. They serve as a very useful check, sort of a watchdog over the actions of the government, and I respect that.

Obviously, if the commander makes certain decisions that the reporter thinks is inhibiting his right to report a legitimate story, he has to appeal to the commander's boss to get that changed.

Every year, the White House Correspondents' Dinner inspires two competing varieties of coverage: celebrity-obsessed fawning and angry tirades about how it represents everything twisted about our broken democracy. It doesn't, really.

The last thing we want is politicians running newspapers, but so too we don't want newspapers running the government.

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

What you have to deal with … is a determined attempt by Press agitation and abuse to exercise an unlawful influence on the decisions of the government authorities.

[Drew] Pearson and [Walter] Winchell are a high price to pay for freedom of the press, but I guess you've got to do it.

One advantage to covering the Congress rather than the White House is that no one is controlling the agenda.

I will not have New York Times muck-racking the President of the United States.

The relationship between the press and the president is always inherently bad; it's never good.

It used to be that a journalist covering the White House had trouble getting news because each person there worked for the same person, while in Congress they are all independent contractors and you could get news. But today, the White House Staff are all independent contractors and that is a great place to get news.

The job of media is the accountability of government.

I would never say, as a member of the press, that there should be fewer press briefings. The more access, the better, no matter who is there or what's going on.

I don't think they need to be nice to reporters, but the White House seems to imagine that releasing information is like a tap that can be turned on and off at their whim.

The press has met their Waterloo, and it's Obama.

Yes, Barack Obama had his clashes with the press. I witnessed those first-hand covering the second term of his administration. But we did not have Barack Obama on almost a weekly basis referring to the press as the enemy of the people and accusing reporters of treason and calling legitimate stories fake news.

I know better than to ever attempt to get a reporter removed from covering any topic. That would never be an option.

The [Donald's] Trump war on the press continues. Tonight, the national cost of a conservative media bubble, now featuring alien conspiracy theories. And about those Obamacare headlines.

We can make no such promises, but if the White House wanted to request the holding of a specific story, the request would have to come from the President to the Executive Editor or the Publisher.