Journalism Bias Quotes

The press keep asking me, 'What was your biggest mistake?' But if I had made a big mistake, they'd all be writing about it, wouldn't they?

The more servile a reporter is toward his sources, the more authoritative he can appear in print.

I have four relatively small children, and around fourth grade, they start doing big projects on Native Americas: everything is Native Americans in elementary school. Do you know how many Native American dresses I've sewn, on and on; it's a full yearlong study. And then never again. As journalists, we never even cover Native Americans.

When I was playing good, nobody was saying I was playing good. When I was playing bad, I would be the first one on the front of the journal.

American journalists tend to treat inequality as a fact of life. But it needn't be.

The BP spill was the greatest environmental catastrophe in U.S. history. Yet somehow, gas companies like BP and Halliburton ran interference on reporting that story.

A historian is not always a prophet facing backwards, but a journalist is always someone who afterwards knew everything beforehand.

Men still control the news, both on and off camera.

For the journalist, anything probable is gospel truth.

I don't think that there's a guy behind the desk at every newspaper saying "No, woman" and sending her on her way, but that's what's systemic about it, right, like that people don't quite realize that maybe they're attracted to a male op-ed more than a female op-ed, or because of networking they know this person from going out to a bar with them.

I think the worst thing that's happened to sports is 'sources say.'

The more boring a newspaper is, the more it is respected. The most respected newspaper in the United States is The New York Times, which has thousands of reporters constantly producing enormous front-page stories about bauxite...The [New York] Post would write about bauxite only if famous celebrites were arrested for snorting it in an exclusive Manhattan nightclub.

Too often reporters covering scientific debates give fringe views equal weight in a misguided attempt to achieve balance.

If establishment journalists were to replicate actual stenography, it would be an improvement on most of the work they produce.

I don't want to paint everybody with the same broad brush. But I do think that the majority of folks now in the briefing room, that are going into journalism - they're not there for the facts and the pursuit of the truth.

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

Politicians are just Daily Mail journalists writ large, aren't they? They're always telling us what's going to happen, and we know they don't know!

There are some programs on FOX that are not only fair and balanced, they're commentary shows. They don't have to be. But they brag about how fair and balanced they are. They don't cover rallies and tea parties. They cheer lead for rallies and tea parties. And as a journalist, I am totally against that.

Political journalists, socially inept or no, are not nerds. Most of them can't do math, a fact that campaigns and politicians regularly exploit.

Something we do know is that review coverage does go to male authors more than women authors. That's a fact. I think it's one of those examples of unconscious bias: If you hire a lot of male journalists, they're more likely to pick up the latest Ian McEwan novel than the latest A.S. Byatt novel.

With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms.

Maybe I had something to do with that. I don't know. But public don't believe press. If you were straight and really told it like it is, as Howard Cosell used to say, right? Of course, he had some questions also. But, if you were straight, I would be your biggest booster. I would be your biggest fan in the world, including bad stories about me. But if you go - as an example, you're CNN. I mean, it's story after story after story is bad.

I think there was a moment in the middle part of the century into the 60s, 70s when at least elite journalism claimed to be non-partisan. You can go back and look at it and wonder about how non-partisan it was.

It is not a camera, or a reporter that makes something real and genuine; more often a camera or a reporter does the opposite.

In the beginning, all of us got 'women type' stories. Like covering the first lady instead of the president.