News Values Quotes

It's CNN who really should hold Trump accountable. And because they are trading the short-term fix of increased ratings by focusing on Trump drama - and I'm not saying they shouldn't cover the Russian investigations, of course they should - but the blanket coverage, it's not about news values. It is about ratings. And it comes at a tremendous cost because Trump supporters are fully defended against this. As far as they're concerned, this is a vast conspiracy, it's fake news, it doesn't impact their daily lives, it makes them see Trump as a victim, which he wants to be seen as.

Publishing is a business, but journalism never was and is not essentially a business. Nor is it a profession.

For anyone in the news business, just the name 'Cronkite' conjures up images of a bygone era when journalists covered, and could at times impact, the most important stories of the day, rather than the most 'compelling' or salacious.

I do know something about the news world. I was sitting on the floors of newsrooms since I was seven years old, and I've been around them my whole life. I understand that someone looks at a story with famous people in it, and you want to put it out.

We live in an era of mind-blowing scientific discovery, virtually none of which ever makes the front page, even as every trivial twist and turn in the rococo political drama has a secure place as the lead story.

Cable news is more titillating to talk about who's up and who's down and all that nonsense as opposed to what's actually done.

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.

The media only writes about the sinners and the scandals, he said, but that's normal, because 'a tree that falls makes more noise than a forest that grows.

The sports page records people's accomplishments, the front page usually records nothing, but man's failures.

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

The day that I spearheaded the passage of America Fast Forward... the newspaper of record did not put it in the newspaper; what they put was my breakup with my ex-girlfriend. I took umbrage with that. A great newspaper ought to be printing things that people care about, issues that people care about.

I grew up around media so for me I've always been interested in that topic, whether it's a complete satire or a documentary. I love anything that touches on the state of information versus entertainment and what's newsworthy and what's not.

There are two sayings that are familiar in every news room across the country: 1) sex sells; 2) if it bleeds it leads.

There is a type of snobbish, pompous journalist who thinks that the only news that has any validity is war, famine, pestilence or politics. I don't come from that school.

I've been intrigued by 'Le Monde' ever since work took me to Paris once, and I noted that on a day when there was some huge worldwide story, the paper led its front page on some cabinet changes in Turkey. It implied a magnificent disdain for the quotidian folderol of mere news.

States which used to communicate directly to their citizens now do so through the media, where their messages are reshaped by the logics of news values and commentary.

You tell the people the stories the best you know. If there is something you don't know, you be up front and make that clear. You always give the aggrieved party the chance to respond before you publish or go to air. That's just my kind of old-fashioned news values.

The journalistic tradition so exalts novelty and flashy discovery, as reputable and newsworthy, that standard accounts for the public not only miss the usual activity of science but also, and more unfortunately, convey a false impression about what drives research.

The New York Times and PBS are gatekeepers of a sort. And they perform that role of gatekeeping with a set of rules and aspirations about where they want to lead their viewers and their readers. They value objective facts, and they attempt to transmit a comprehensive view of the world. And they do have values. And they do lead their viewers and their readers to certain conclusions. But it's different than such monopolies as Apple or Google which are dissecting information into these bits and pieces, which they're then transmitting to people. And it's about clicks.