Media Digest » Classic Quotes

Quote of the Week – 12/10/11

Barny de Hoedt — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 13:36:10 +0000

“The world is full of people who would like to control the flow of information. [They] are winning the information war. The liars are winning.”

Guardian journalist and author of Flat Earth News, Nick Davies, tells the House of Lords culture committee that the media is losing the battle against censorship.

(Source: MediaGuardian)

Quote of the Week – 23/2/11

Barny de Hoedt — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 13:52:08 +0000

“Journalism can never be silent: that is its greatest virtue and its greatest fault. It must speak, and speak immediately, while the echoes of wonder, the claims of triumph and the signs of horror are still in the air.”

This famous quote from Henry Grunwald, the former editor of TIME magazine, feels especially pertinent in the wake of recent events.

Classic quotes – journalism

Michael Copus — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 14:54:58 +0000

“In journalism it is simpler to sound off than it is to find out. It is more elegant to pontificate than it is to sweat.”
Harold Evans

“Laziness has become the chief characteristic of journalism, displacing incompetence.”
Kingsley Amis

“In journalism, there has always been a tension between getting it first and getting it right.”
Ellen Goodman

“Newspapers are unable seemingly, to discriminate between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilisation.”
George Bernard Shaw

“Once a newspaper touches a story, the facts are lost forever, even to the protagonists.”
Norman Mailer

“Get your facts first, and then you can distort ‘em as much as you please.”
Mark Twain

“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.”
Oscar Wilde

“Freedom of the press in Britain is freedom to print such of the proprietor’s prejudices as the advertisers won’t object to.”
Hannen Swafffer