Sensationalism Quotes

When I was in advertising we used naked women to pull them in. Now I use swastikas and uniforms.

A lot of stories that have fascinated me are tabloid stories that have come from other newspapers, like 'The New York Times.'

The one function that TV news performs very well is that when there is no news we give it to you with the same emphasis as if it were.

Failure, it is thought, is what sells, and what people want to hear and read about. I am not so sure.

When I was in advertising we used to pull them in with naked women. Now I do it with swastikas and uniforms.

The media increase the political nastiness while distancing voters from those clashes. Citizens become spectators. ­Headline-­driven news emphasizes the extremes, the fights, the hysteria, the sensational. Political reporters, trying to appear objective by quoting two opposing sides to almost every story, mostly sharpen the differences, slighting any centrist position.

People know I'll be sensational, not scandalous. There's a fine-line difference. Sensational means titillating the viewer. Scandalous means being condemned by the viewer for making unfair, uncouth revelations.

Everyone wants drama. Everyone is living for drama.

The news is a public service. It's a way to inform people of what's going on in their world. And when you make it about ratings and make it about ad dollars, there's no incentive to inform people. The incentive is to be sensationalistic and get as many people to watch as you can without any regard for truth or objectivity.

The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything. Except what is worth knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesman-like habits, supplies their demands.

Any newspaper, from the first line to the last, is nothing but a web of horrors, I cannot understand how an innocent hand can touch a newspaper without convulsing in disgust.

I think the media are so hypocritical a lot of the time in the way they chastise something just so that they can print it again.

To a newspaperman, a human being is an item with the skin wrapped around it.

Do I like tawdry, sleazy stories? Yeah, I do.

TV is set up to be just a shout fest: Is this good for Republicans or bad for Republicans; is this good for Cain or bad for Cain... tell me something that I need to know.

The media is always looking for a story of one kind or another.

So many in the press turn gossip into gasoline and keep pouring it on the fire.

These tabloid magazines - I think they're hideous and the downfall of society.

Everything isn't breaking news. You can't go to DEFCON One just because Sanjay Gupta found a new moisturizer.

There's no worse crime in journalism these days than simply deciding something's a story because Drudge links to it.

I think some journalists and bloggers want their articles to be clever, and the way into that is by writing nasty things. I think our culture likes to be mean. I don't just find this in fashion - I find it in the news. More and more, it is about ripping people apart.

I think that as is true in this industry, everything gets blown out of proportion because it's more fun for people to read about. It's even more fun to read about if the stories get wilder and wilder.

I love what news has become. It's no longer based on facts, it's based on entertainment.

The gleam in their eyes telegraphs only too clearly that they are hoping for a headline, which of course means something disparaging, because nothing makes such good copy as a feud.

Michael Jackson is the ultimate traffic accident. People can't take their eyes off him.