quotations about the news media
Seminal changes in the news media over the past three decades have also helped create a more volatile political arena. During my last year in office, I joined with Ted Turner to celebrate the birth of CNN, and this new network provided global news coverage that was accurate, comprehensive, and objective--standards that were later partially sacrificed to meet intense competition from other channels. To gain viewers, the twenty-four-hour news channels have now come to rely on reporting that often dramatizes or exaggerates each reported rumor or fact. In addition, the more radical presentations of information or commentary have proven to be most popular, so radio and television programs, like political alignments, have tended toward extremes. An unfortunate result of the need for constant reporting--especially on Internet news outlets--has been the demise of hundreds of newspapers that have proved unable to compete, leaving major cities and towns with one merged journal, or, in some cases, none at all. The free and vigorous presentation of different opinion has been sacrificed to polarized uniformity.
JIMMY CARTER
White House Diary
He was intrigued by the power of words, not the literary words that filled the books in the library but the sharp, staccato words that went into the writing of news stories. Words that went for the jugular. Active verbs that danced and raced on the page.
ROBERT CORMIER
I Am the Cheese
A piece of news loses its flavor when it hath been an hour in the air. I love, if I may so speak, to have it fresh from the tree, and to convey it to my friends before it is faded.
RICHARD STEELE
The Spectator, No. 625
A raised eyebrow, an inflection of the voice, a caustic remark dropped in the middle of a broadcast can raise doubts in a million minds about the veracity of a public official or the wisdom of a governmental policy.
SPIRO AGNEW
speech the Midwest Republican Regional Conference in Des Moines, Iowa, November 13, 1969
Information is the most valuable commodity in the world today and this business is about giving people access to information that is relevant to their lives.
JAMES MURDOCH
Forbes, July 1998
Looking back, I still can't believe how unprofessional the news media was. So much spin, so few hard facts. All those digestible sound bites from an army of 'experts' all contradicting one another, all trying to seem more 'shocking' and 'in-depth' than the last one.
MAX BROOKS
World War Z
One reason that cats are happier than people is that they have no newspapers.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS
In the Mecca