Daniel Levitin Quotes

At CNN, our view is that good journalism equals good business.

The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything. Except what is worth knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesman-like habits, supplies their demands.

The essence of American journalism is vulgarity divested of truth.

Junk journalism is the evidence of a society that has got at least one thing right, that there should be nobody with the power to dictate where responsible journalism begins

The media is done, they don't do journalism anymore, it's activism, nothing more, right?

I developed an interest in supporting independent journalists in a way that leverages their work to the greatest extent possible, all in support of the public interest.

I have always been of the opinion that the right kind of journalism is a critical part of our democracy.

A good journalist is modest; his only job is simple: to decide what counts as news.

If you don't think there is any value in the work I, or any other serious journalists do, then don't spend your money on it. At least you have the choice.

When I was in journalism school, you were taught to be completely objective. But we don't see that anymore.

I don't trust a lot of journalists.

I worry about every newspaper. I worry about the financial undertaking, and I worry that somehow the loss of the sale of the paper version will affect their ability to have journalists and editors and producers. We really need those.

All of journalism is a shrinking art. So much of it is hype. The O.J. Simpson story is a landmark in the decline of journalism.

The responsibility that I feel is to do as good a job as a journalist as I can possibly do.

People sort of take it for granted, but the more you see of the media world the more you appreciate a paper like the Times where its family continues to invest in editorial quality and I think it's the truly is the best paper in the world.

I care deeply about journalism, but we need to be a business.

You want to live in a world where people have access to the news–in other words, documentary evidence of what is really happening. And an ISIS video of hostages being beheaded is both an act of propaganda and is itself a fact.... If you're a platform, you don't want to suppress the facts. On the other hand, you don't want to participate in advancing propaganda. And there is the conundrum.

It is the business of the journalist … to stand in permanent Opposition.

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

A news sense is really a sense of what is important, what is vital, what has color and life — what people are interested in. That's journalism.

There is a bias in the press for facts over fiction.

I can swear on a stack of Bibles that not once in doing the 'CBS Evening News' for 19 years - well, I take it back. Once perhaps. But during 19 years, with perhaps one exception, was I ever aware of any political or commercial pressure on that broadcast whatsoever.

Journalism is not writing.

I have so much more compassion for journalists and the work that they have to do, in order to do the jobs that they have to do. I am much more in awe of and am celebratory of great journalism when I see it, and I'm much more critical of bad journalism, or crap masquerading as journalism.

Everybody who's in the news business today was influenced in a positive way by Walter Cronkite. He had ability, humility and integrity, a rare combination.