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date: 28 September 2023

Journalism 

  1. If it falls to me to start a fight to cut out the cancer of bent and twisted journalism in our country with the simple sword of truth and the trusty shield of British fair play, so be it.
    Jonathan Aitken 1942–  British Conservative politician: statement, London, 10 April 1995, in Times 11 April 1995
  2. Anyone here been raped and speaks English?
    shouted by a British TV reporter in a crowd of Belgian civilians waiting to be airlifted out of the Belgian Congo, c.1960
    Anonymous: Edward Behr Anyone Here been Raped and Speaks English? (1981)
  3. When seagulls follow a trawler, it is because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea.
    Eric Cantona 1966–  French footballer: to the media at the end of a press conference, 31 March 1995
  4. Journalism largely consists in saying ‘Lord Jones Dead’ to people who never knew that Lord Jones was alive.
    G. K. Chesterton 1874–1936 English essayist, novelist, and poet: The Wisdom of Father Brown (1914)
  5. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.
    Willis Goldbeck and James Warner Bellah American screenwriters: The Man who Shot Liberty Valance (1962 film); see also Johnson
  6. Go to where the silence is and say something.
    accepting an award from Columbia University for her coverage of the 1991 massacre in East Timor by Indonesian troops
    Amy Goodman 1957–  American journalist: in Columbia Journalism Review March/April 1994
  7. You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war.
    message to the artist Frederic Remington in Havana, Cuba, during the Spanish-American War of 1898
    William Randolph Hearst 1863–1951 American newspaper publisher and tycoon: attributed
  8. There is one sacred rule of journalism. The writer must not invent. The legend on the licence must read: None of this was made up.
    John Richard Hersey 1914–93 American journalist and novelist: ‘The Legend on the Licence’ in Yale Review vol. 70, 1980
  9. Editor: a person employed by a newspaper, whose business it is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed.
    Elbert Hubbard 1859–1915 American writer: The Roycroft Dictionary (1914)
  10. Our liberty depends on freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.
    Thomas Jefferson 1743–1826 American Democratic Republican statesman, 3rd President 1801–9: letter to James Currie, 28 January 1786, in Papers of Thomas Jefferson (1954) vol. 9
  11. Power without responsibility: the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.
    summing up Lord Beaverbrook's political standpoint as a newspaper editor; Stanley Baldwin, Kipling's cousin, subsequently obtained permission to use the phrase in a speech, 18 March 1931
    Rudyard Kipling 1865–1936 English writer and poet: in Kipling Journal vol. 38, no. 180, December 1971
  12. The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm.
    Thomas Babington Macaulay 1800–59 English politician and historian: Essays Contributed to the Edinburgh Review (1843) vol. 1 ‘Hallam’
  13. Listen folks, I'm going to have to stop for a minute, because I've lost my voice—This is the worst thing I've ever witnessed.
    eyewitness account of the Hindenburg disaster
    Herbert ‘Herb’ Morrison d. 1989 American radio announcer: recorded broadcast, 6 May 1937
  14. It is not necessary to remind you that the fact that your voice is amplified to the degree where it reaches from one end of the country to the other does not confer upon you greater wisdom or understanding than you possessed when your voice reached only from one end of the bar to the other.
    often quoted as ‘Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn't mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar‘
    Ed Murrow 1908–65 American broadcaster and journalist: speech to Radio and Television News Directors Association, Chicago, 15 October 1958
  15. I—like every politician at the federal level—am almost entirely dependent on the media to reach my constituents…I am who the media says I am. I say what they say I say. I become who they say I've become.
    Barack Obama 1961–  American Democratic statesman, 44th President from 2009: The Audacity of Hope (2006)
  16. Journalists belong in the gutter because that is where the ruling classes throw their guilty secrets.
    Gerald Priestland 1927–91 English writer and journalist: in Observer 22 May 1988
  17. A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself.
    inscribed on the gateway to the Columbia School of Journalism in New York
    Joseph Pulitzer 1847–1911 Hungarian-born American newspaper proprietor and editor: W. J. Granberg The World of Joseph Pulitzer (1965)
  18. The men with the muck-rakes are often indispensable to the well-being of society; but only if they know when to stop raking the muck.
    Theodore Roosevelt 1858–1919 American Republican statesman, 26th President 1901–9: speech in Washington, 14 April 1906; see Bunyan
  19. Comment is free, but facts are sacred.
    C. P. Scott 1846–1932 British journalist: in Manchester Guardian 5 May 1921; see Stoppard
  20. Comment is free but facts are on expenses.
    Tom Stoppard 1937–  British dramatist: Night and Day (1978) act 2; see Scott
  21. All newspaper and journalistic activity is an intellectual brothel from which there is no retreat.
    Leo Tolstoy 1828–1910 Russian novelist: letter to Prince V. P. Meshchersky, 22 August 1871
  22. There are laws to protect the freedom of the press's speech, but none that are worth anything to protect the people from the press.
    Mark Twain 1835–1910 American writer: ‘License of the Press’ (1873)
  23. Journalism—an ability to meet the challenge of filling the space.
    Rebecca West 1892–1983 English novelist and journalist: in New York Herald Tribune 22 April 1956
  24. You cannot hope
    to bribe or twist,
    thank God! the
    British journalist.
     
    But, seeing what
    the man will do
    unbribed, there's
    no occasion to.
     
    Humbert Wolfe 1886–1940 British poet: ‘Over the Fire’ (1930)
  25. Rock journalism is people who can't write interviewing people who can't talk for people who can't read.
    Frank Zappa 1940–93 American rock musician and songwriter: in Toronto Star 24 September 1977; see Capp