Chris Hansen Quotes

The power to mould the future of the Republic will be in the hands of the journalists of future generations.

Journalism without a moral position is impossible. Every journalist is a moralist. It's absolutely unavoidable.

Kids shouldn't see all the violence they do these days. But the industry just doesn't care.

They take journalism really seriously because they know the force that it is and can be.

And I believe that good journalism, good television, can make our world a better place.

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.

'...all the faults of the age come from Christianity and journalism

There is much to be said in favour of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.

1952 was the last year that television covered a political event as if television weren't there.

The highest power of television journalism is not the transmission of information but the transmission of experience.

If giving back a penny causes one child to be injured or abused, the answer is: Keep your penny.

There are a lot of people who think our job is to reassure the public every night that their home, their community and their nation is safe. I don't subscribe to that at all. I subscribe to leaving people with essentially … a rough draft of history. Some days it's reassuring, some days it's absolutely destructive.

For anyone in the news business, just the name 'Cronkite' conjures up images of a bygone era when journalists covered, and could at times impact, the most important stories of the day, rather than the most 'compelling' or salacious.

Frankly, I think that the news industry is critically important because it points out things and surfaces truths that can often be uncomfortable. I think that that's working, and the spotlight has been pointed on things that we have a responsibility to do better, and I accept that.

Even when we talked about child labor, we were frowned upon. But then you know that you have to speak the truth irrespective of the repercussions.

I think in many aspects the press does amazing things and helps a lot of people.

Rusbridger's intelligence, personal sense of higher calling and almost other-worldly self-absorption have played no small part in the stories that have most defined the Guardian and that, under another sort of steward, might have had a much more sceptical reception.

I am a big believer in the power of journalism; it's a heroic pursuit.

Let me go back to a fundamental thing we all used to agree on: information is power. That's why we became journalists in the first place.

My world. My rules. I would command everyone to do so many things! Be kind. Oh, I would command everyone to stop buying tabloids!

No reporter of my generation, whatever his genius, ever really rated spats and a walking stick until he had covered both a lynching and a revolution.

The media is news gatherers. Why in the world are the media a factor?

I had grown up as a feature writer, and basically my career had been in The National Lampoon and as a magazine editor, and I'd never been a reporter.

Black people watch more television than anybody else, which makes it legitimate to talk about television. Its anesthetizing effect has been quite real. But that concern isn't new.

All of us who professionally use the mass media are the shapers of society. We can vulgarise that society. We can brutalise it. Or we can help lift it onto a higher level.