Thomas Sadoski Quotes

The media uses polls to create news stories. I think polls are just an extension of the editorial page, an excuse to get them on the front page. You can ask any question you want, get any answer you want, and then run around with that as a news story.

I've always been more interested in the content of our newspapers, political positions day to day, the thrill of communicating with people through words that I am in the pure business aspects.

I am satisfied that all politicians were meant to be journalists and all journalists meant to be politicians.

The [London] Times has made many ministries.

I think that if you feel imaginatively towards a subject, you really shouldn't do it in a journalistic context, because then you're just fabricating, and that's crazy.

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.

I quote the late Ed Murow. ... He said: 'Look, people listen to me when they want an eyewitness account. 'They think I'm a pretty good reporter. But when it comes to my opinions, mine are not worth anymore than the guy at the end of the bar.' And I believe that about myself.

The photographer must bear the responsibility for his work and its effect …[for] photographic journalism, because of its tremendous audience reached by publications using it, has more influence on public thinking than any other branch of photography.

I think the news people no longer have any idea of what covering the news is.

Write letters to your editors, write to your members of Congress, and write to your news stations.

The newspaper that obstructs the law on a trivial pretext, for money's sake, is a dangerous enemy to the public weal. That awful power, the public opinion of a nation, is created in America by a horde of ignorant, self-complacent simpletons who failed at ditching and shoemaking and fetched up in journalism on their way to the poorhouse.

I think journalism can come from anywhere, and comedy can certainly come from anywhere.

Anderson Cooper has a job to do. And that job is to try to reinforce his credibility in the gay community after the fact that you couldn’t get him out of the closet for 10 years with a canister of tear gas. Now he’s the sheriff; now he’s running around writing everybody a ticket!

Journalists cover words and delude themselves into thinking they have committed journalism.

I run a couple of newspapers. What do you do?

Whenever the press quits abusing me, I know I'm in the wrong pew.

She said she was working for the ABC news, it was as much of the alphabet as she knew how to use.

Because of the spin-meisters and the focus groups and the way politics is run now. It's run by polls and focus groups. So it's even more true today, I think, than it was some 40 years ago.

Journalism has a distinct place in familiarizing and expressing public opinion.

The Monica Lewinsky scandal was happening at the very time I was writing the West Wing pilot and it was hard, at least for Americans, to look at the White House and think of anything but a punch line. Plus a show about politics, a show that took place in Washington, had just never worked before in American television. So the show was delayed for a year.

I have never pretended to be a great writer. I am totally immodest about being a great reporter and a good news writer. I write fast and I write accurately, nearly as accurately as anybody can be, and that's my skill.

Journalism is just the art of capturing behavior.

My main interests right now are to publish, to write, to explicate various views which I hope have an impact on thinking people.

Chats are so new to newspapers, historically. But they're so incredibly valuable because editors/reporters/columnists get to find out what's on the minds of our readers, what you think we should be writing about, what ticks you off, what makes you happy. Sometimes it can confirm what you think readers are interested in; sometimes it can turn you around 180 degrees.

The news business is simple but it's not easy to do well. You know the story, you have to cover it, you need pictures, you need good writers, you have to get it to the screen but it's obviously not easy to do well.