Errol Morris Quotes

… yellow journalism

I think yellow journalism is something that appears everywhere, in the underdeveloped and developed worlds alike.

Sensationalism sells: Don't let the facts get in the way of a good story.

I figure no matter what interview I do, the real good 'journalists' are going to find the completely irrelevant quotes that will drum up some controversy and stick it on their page to get some clicks and completely miss the real context of what the interview is about. That's what we do nowadays and call it 'journalism.'

I think everyone knows the news has become ridiculous. It's entertainment driven.

A lot of news is just entertainment masquerading as news.

That crossover of whether it's entertainment or news is the biggest crock of b.s. in television today, because it's all entertainment.

News has become entertainment. Once that happens, a whole series of horrific events start to happen, whether it's the lack of dissemination of something that can inform you or something that actually negatively impacts society.

I think it's a shame that we have 'Bild' like you have the 'Sun'. Now serious newspapers like 'FAZ' and 'Spiegel' use a bit of the tone of 'Bild.' This is terrible.

The papers, you know, they're always gonna just make stuff up. They think it's in the public interest.

Most Americans may not realize that the news they consume is driven in part by the media mantra, 'if it bleeds, it leads.'

The media loves negative spin.

I criticize the media for inventing stories.

I do feel like the media is one of the biggest problems. If you look at all these rolling news channels, they sensationalize the story, they focus on gossip, and they don't actually tell the full story.

If you close your eyes you can imagine the hackers sitting in a room, combing through the documents to find the ones that will draw the most blood. And in a room next door are American journalists doing the same thing. As demented and criminal as it is, at least the hackers are doing it for a cause. The press is doing it for a nickel.

I hope we never live to see the day when a thing is as bad as some of our newspapers make it.

The primacy of preaching over reporting inevitably leads journalism down a path of hyperbole, distortion and outright fabrication.

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.

What they will do is, you know the tabloids. They'll take one element of a story that may be true and they'll build everything around it. Take a picture and invent a story around it.

All news is an exaggeration of life.

The problem that I think is reasonable to assert about Fox and its coverage is that they make up stories out of whole cloth and then make a big deal out of them.

You know journalists. You know the media. They are going to hang on to anything negative they possibly can.

Well, I mean, the real attack on truth is tabloid journalism in the United States.

There are two sayings that are familiar in every news room across the country: 1) sex sells; 2) if it bleeds it leads.

Giving the same value to fiction as to fact in the interest of so-called fairness is to mislead the American people and the press has become party to that.