Hunter S. Thompson Quotes

The whole sort of debate of classic objective journalism versus a new immersion journalism - that can go on forever... I made no bones about my position: I don't think you can be objective.

The first word I would remove from the folklore of journalism is the word objective.

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

The difference between Koppell and Olberman types is that one gives editorializing in all its editorial frankness so there are no mistakes as to bias, and the other passes off a subtler bias as objectivity.

Letting journalism be from the perspective of the journalist. It's usually a no-no, and journalists are encouraged to be completely objective.

Journalists aren't supposed to be cheerleaders.

You know it's always amazed me - I think the most startling thing that's happened in the last couple of decades is that there is no sort of objective reporting anymore.

I want the news delivered unbiased. I thought that was the whole point with journalism.

Some people will say that words like ‘scum’ and ‘rotten’ are wrong for Objective Journalism — which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place. He looked so good on paper that you could almost vote for him sight unseen. He seemed so all-American, so much like Horatio Alger, that he was able to slip through the cracks of Objective Journalism. You had to get Subjective to see Nixon clearly, and the shock of recognition was often painful.

Stop pretending journalists are anything other than the Hillary PR team.

There are not two sides to a story when one side is a lie. Journalists - and the rest of us - must stop giving equal time to things that don't have an opposing side.

We are inflicting opinion in our newscasts like never before. That was never done and never taught in our journalism classes.

A big part of my book deals with the caliber of journalism. Our journalism in general is deplorable, and on elections in particular it's very ineffectual. There are a lot of problems, a lot of them having to do with to problems within the professional code of journalism, which defines its role as the regurgitation of what people in power say. Another big problem is that we allow people with money to basically buy what's talked about in campaigns through running TV ads.

One of the problems I have always discussed is the refusal to distinguish between comment and fact. The newspaper wraps every fact into a comment. It is impossible to give mere fact without establishing point of view.

Journalism is kind of scary and of it we should be wary.

If you consider the great journalists in history, you don't see too many objective journalists on that list.

Truth is stranger than nonfiction. And life is too interesting to be left to journalists. People have stories, but journalists have 'takes,' and it's their takes that usually win out when the stories are too complicated or, as happens, not complicated enough.

My job as a television anchor or television reporter is not to proselytize.

I think there are a lot of reasons to be critical of the media in America.

I don't want the news to be patriotic. I don't want to see flags on the lapels of the anchors. I don't want any of that.

Journalists do not like to report on uncertainties. They would almost rather be wrong than ambiguous.

I don't know that I 'look up' to them, but in our predictably partisan media world, I admire journalists who are genuinely nonpartisan and totally fearless in their work - people who have no interest in being invited to the cocktail party. I don't agree with everything he writes, but Glenn Greenwald comes to mind.

I think, though, that people will read into a reporter's story a bias that they want to see in a reporter.

There is a long-standing tradition in the mainstream press of middle-of-the-road journalism that is objective and fair. I would hate to see that fall victim to a panic about the Fox effect.

I wish there was a news channel that really told you what was going on in the world, not just sensationalized news.