Press / Media Coverage Quotes

Is journalism a profession that serves the public by maintaining high standards, or is it a social construct that should be redesigned to directly serve certain social goods? Some argue that all journalism involves bias, either hidden or revealed. But it is one thing to say that objectivity and fairness are ultimately unreachable. It is another to cease grasping for them. That would be a world of purely private truths, in which the boldest liars and demagogues would thrive.

Some issues are just too important to be left to an unscripted Joe Biden.

This is a perfect illustration of reverse causality. Hamas threatens and harasses Israel, but it is only Israel’s response that warrants close attention and scrutiny.

The press has become the greatest power within the Western countries, more powerful than the legislature, the executive and the judiciary. One would then like to ask: by what law has it been elected and to whom is it responsible?

If you say a more outrageous thing than everyone else that day, you're going to get the headlines.

A journalists's job is not to be balanced. It is to be accurate.

In the end, I did not feel any cleaner than he was … I pretended once again now and then that [Senator Joseph] McCarthy was not a serious man; but I always knew that the devil in me and the larger devil in him were very consequential figures indeed

The issues at the core of our national debates are more complicated than can be explained in soundbites and slogans by talking-heads and special guests. The media caters to our TL;DR-afflicted nation with over-simplified lowest common denominator journalism which completely fails us when the issues are not black-or-white or when the answers require caveats. Nuanced discussions don’t make attention grabbing headlines or dramatic journalistic copy so media reporting disproportionately accentuates extreme perspectives to create the conflict-drama that drives viewers and readership. The resulting rhetoric polarizes rather than convinces.

In the West fashionable trends of thought and ideas are carefully separated from those which are not fashionable; nothing is forbidden, but what is not fashionable will hardly ever find its way into periodicals or books or be heard in colleges. Legally your researchers are free, but they are conditioned by the fashion of the day ... a selection dictated by fashion and the need to match mass standards frequently prevents independent-minded people from giving their contribution to public life.

We'll have to avoid the perils of false equivelance, quoting a person on each side as if there was a genuine debate when we knoow that there isn't.

Social change comes not only from the courtroom, but from talking to the media.

I consider the media to be indispensable to democracy. That we need an independent media to hold people like me to account. […] power can be very addictive and it can be corrosive and it’s important for the media to call to account people who abuse their power, whether it be here or elsewhere.

Mr, Trump's comment reflect an insulting degree of ignorance and/or insensitivity. It demonstrates a profound ignorance of history.

I was tempted to raise this issue in the Senate several weeks ago, but I decided that I would get more attention if I could get it printed in the papers.

An increase in press coverage of police shootings isn’t the same thing as an increase in police shootings.

African American Communities are absolutely in the worst shape that they've ever been before. Ever, ever, ever.

To Eisenhower it seemed like the press was building up McCarthy.

I'd have to set my hair on fire to get on the news.

We cover Congress only when it gets to the final vote on something, too late for the public to respond.