quotations about the news media
In the age of technology there is constant access to vast amounts of information. The basket overflows; people get overwhelmed; the eye of the storm is not so much what goes on in the world, it is the confusion of how to think, feel, digest, and react to what goes on.
CRISS JAMI
Venus in Arms
All the papers that matter live off their advertisements, and the advertisers exercise an indirect censorship over news.
GEORGE ORWELL
Why I Write
The newspapers of Utopia, he had long ago decided, would be terribly dull.
ARTHUR C. CLARKE
2001: A Space Odyssey
A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.
ARTHUR MILLER
London Observer
News travels fast in places where nothing much ever happens.
CHARLES BUKOWSKI
Ham on Rye
News told, rumors heard, truth implied, facts buried.
TOBA BETA
My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
Ill news, madam,
Are swallow-winged, but what's good
Walks on crutches.
PHILIP MASSINGER
Picture
Without news to feed it, the biggest story starves.
EMLYN WILLIAMS
Beyond Belief
Newsworthy deaths had to be exceptional. Most people go unobserved.
HARUKI MURAKAMI
Dance Dance Dance
Where village statesmen talk'd with looks profound,
And news much older than their ale went round.
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
The Deserted Village
Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.
A. J. LEIBLING
The Wayward Press
Wars might come and go, but the seven o'clock news lives forever.
LEWIS H. LAPHAM
Money and Class in America
Journalism is in fact history on the run. It is history written in time to be acted upon: thereby not only recording events but at times influencing them.
THOMAS GRIFFETH
attributed, Nieman Reports, 1958
Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
letter to John Norvell, June 11, 1807
How goes it now, sir? This news which is called true is so like an old tale, that the verity of it is in strong suspicion.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
The Winter's Tale
Journalism is ... the recording of history while the facts are not all in.
THOMAS GRIFFETH
attributed, Nieman Reports, 1958
Ill news is wing'd with fate, and flies apace.
JOHN DRYDEN
Threnodia Augustalis
News is the manna of a day.
M. GREEN
attributed, Day's Collacon
The greatest influence over content was necessity--they had holes to fill on every page and jammed in any vaguely newsworthy string of words, provided it didn't include expletives, which they were apparently saving for their own use around the office.
TOM RACHMAN
The Imperfectionists
I would not know how I am supposed to feel about many stories if not for the fact that the TV news personalities make sad faces for sad stories and happy faces for happy stories.
DAVE BARRY
Dave Barry Is Not Taking This Sitting Down