Donald Evans Quotes

All the good things that are happening in America don't get reported on a lot.

Today, political events are nullified unless they're on TV.

In the battle of substance over flash, few to none of the Al Jazeera correspondents are recognizable to U.S. audiences. Many have foreign names and accents; none have best-selling books atop the list or can be heard pounding their shoes on the nightly infotainment podium.

There are lots of excellent analysts out there. John Holdren at the Harvard Kennedy School, who was just president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, has been talking about this stuff for years. There are lots of people out there who understand what’s going on. The problem is, they aren’t much picked up on Fox News.

When the news is good, the BBC view is: 'Get the government out of the picture quickly, don't allow them to say anything about it.' When the news is bad: 'Let's all dump on the government.'

All of the violence that doesn't occur doesn't get reported on the news.

Television isn't inherently good or bad. You go to a bookstore, there are how many thousands of books, but how many of those do you want? Five? Television's the same way. If you're going to show people stuff, television is the way to go. Words and pictures show things.

What might be good for ratings can be bad for the country. The hard-core partisans are self-segregating themselves into separate political realities. But the majority of Americans are starting to wake up to the game.

The news media is so quick to pick up tragic stories of imperiled children that it seems like there are more terrible events today than ever before - when in fact it's quite the opposite. It is, in all manners possible to calculate, the safest time in the history of civilization to be a kid.

The world is such a big place, and there's so much that goes on, but a lot of the media really just cover the same thing over and over again.

In the beginning when I sat next to Tom Brokaw on the 'Today' show, the stories I was interested in were those having to do with women and children and learning and health. In those days, 25 to 30 years ago, that was called soft news, and not in a nice way.

The news media's silence, particularly television news, is reprehensible. If we knew as much about Darfur as we do about Michael Jackson, we might be able to stop these things from continuing.

So a lot of our shows where even we think we've taken a very deliberate stand, liberals say, 'That's awesome, you took on the conservatives' same show and conservatives say 'That's awesome, you took on liberals.'

Today, the news is scandals; that is news, but the many children who don't have food - that's not news. This is grave. We can't rest easy while things are this way.

One thing that happens on the 'Newsroom' is that every time a real story does get incorporated into the show, there's always an angle that's provided that hasn't really been dealt with yet.

I felt pretty good growing up. I didn't feel a lot of prejudice or racism. But I do remember, if there was going to be a movie or a television show with Asian characters, I would go out of my way to avoid them, because they portrayed all Asians as either ridiculously good or ridiculously bad; you know, the whole Charlie Chan-Fu Manchu thing.

My individual power is limited. I want to use my high-profile way to wake people up to take action together to do good things. I can only awake them with my performance art and creativity.

The American people would not want to know of any misquotes that Dan Quayle may or may not make.

I do believe, given the heritage of Al Jazeera itself in Arabic and in English, I think Al Jazeera will succeed in introducing another perspective on the news that the American market is in need for.

People realized that they could come on Fox News Sunday, and they would be well and fairly treated.

For sure, the American people have access to more information now than any other people who have ever lived on earth. And I think we do a pretty good job of sorting out what's important.

When the government is handed over to the Iraqi Council on 30 June, many have declared, oh, the Americans must never leave because civil unrest may erupt. Well, I agree, we cannot abruptly depart, but Iraq needs to step up to the plate on 30 June.

I don't have them down here asking me what my urban agenda is. I don't find them really doing in-depth stories on community-based organizations that have been struggling for a long time and who are out trying to get funds. They aren't interested in those stories.

The press tends to reflect what's important to the country.

Many newspapers have become players as well as spectators in the political debate.