News Management Quotes

It is the merit of a general to impart good news, and to conceal the truth.

A news conference is a device by which the establishment keeps large numbers of reporters from covering the news every place else.

My stint as general manager of MSNBC made me particularly sensitive to how the big stories are covered.

I don't think they need to be nice to reporters, but the White House seems to imagine that releasing information is like a tap that can be turned on and off at their whim.

How can you govern if you always have to feed the news cycle?

My role at NBC was president of 'NBC News.' I had that role for eight years.

I will say this: One thing I did see in my reporting again and again is that the Obamas themselves are much more involved in handling stories than is usually known.

I set a rule that people weren't allowed to send good news unless they sent around an equal amount of bad news. We had to get a balanced picture. In fact, I kind of favored just hearing about the accounts we were losing because ... bad news is generally more actionable than good news.

The press is like a big bass, you just stick a hook in their mouth and they'll take it.

I was the editor of the 'News of the World;' I was the editor of the 'Sun' and chief executive.

Even the White House has a press agent.

If the first lady is concerned about this Internet cycle, what would she have done during the heyday when there was 12, 13 editions of a paper in one day? What would she have done with that news cycle?

In a lot of cases, as in Tom and Nicole's case, the tabloids were about to break the story, so they said just let the news out. And they called organizations such as ours.

Editors must control broadcasts to prevent information, even accurate, from damaging or alarming the population by its form, presentation or timing.

It's amazing that the amount of news that happens in the world every day always just exactly fits the newspaper.

To be sure, administrations since Ronald Reagan had gone out of their way to massage and 'spin' news to the president's advantage, while the media did its best to un-spin it.

Some news managers have been slow to grasp that good television news is always substance over form.

During a war, news should be given out for instruction rather than information.

In one sense, newspaper editor is an appropriate job for an out-of-work politician; politicians live the news cycle as intensely as editors.

During the Gulf War, journalists used to challenge government news managers and insisted they wouldn't just accept the official version of events.

By virtue of some of the ways the game is played, in terms of message discipline, in terms of access for reporters, and especially in the way that sources and subjects, especially famous subjects, treat the media, almost by default there's more news that's falling into books.

If you've got some news that you don't want to get noticed, put it out Friday afternoon 4:00 pm.

To me, Jeff Zucker is synonymous with winning. He's an incredible news executive.

Every organization has men and women who will be sure that the news gets out when it is good news. The problem is with the bad news. That is the challenge of democracy

If the press doesn’t get the proper care and feeding, you don’t get the proper spin on your story.