Journalism Quotes

The page is short, has no flagged entries, and is dominated by Oscar Wilde. John Pilger, Joseph Addison, Thomas Carlyle and W. T. Stead share the rest of the top. Wilde’s three sourced lines are the ones to know. In The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891) he says that in America the President reigns for four years and Journalism governs for ever and ever, and that the public has an insatiable curiosity to know everything except what is worth knowing. In The Critic as Artist (1891) he declines to defend modern journalism, which, he says, justifies its own existence by a Darwinian principle.

Random quote on Journalism

Most quoted on journalism:

Journalism is the one thing that protects us. There's a history of crusading, let–the–chips–fall–where–they–may journalists. But that's given way to 'advocacy journalists,' who have left– or right–wing biases. That doesn't make sense. The only thing a journalist should worship is the truth.

Andrew Vachss

As to [General Douglas] Macarthur, I don't feel in a position to have clear opinions about anyone I know only from newspapers. You see, whenever they deal with anyone (or anything) I know myself, I find they're always a mass of lies & misunderstandings: so I conclude they're no better in the places where I don't know.

C. S. Lewis

The newspapers were beginning to get on to Jaycie now. They had ignored her at first. Put things down to anyone and everything else. After all, it was a bit awkward for them having to do with a woman who was beautiful but apparently had no sex life; they didn’t know what to try and smear her with.

Naomi Mitchison

That is the salvation and the demon of journalism, the knowledge that there is almost always a different perspective from which to see the conundrum.

Terry Pratchett Dodger (2012)

I know enough to never take journalists at their word.

Emma Newman After Atlas (2016)