Nat Hentoff Quotes

Most reporters who come to me get their stories directly from press releases. Very few do what one would consider to be their professional duty.

Journalists are accused of being lapdogs when they don't ask the hard questions, but then accused of being rude when they do. Good thing we have tough hides.

I read the papers like everybody else, so I don't complain about what they print.

You hope the American people are fair. We recognize journalists have to kill somebody each week.

Even if you had the wherewithal to embarrass a reporter, there was no mechanism to do it. And in most cases, you might as well save your breath because the reporter had no shame anyway.

As players we're held accountable for poor performance, I think the same should be said for journalists.

The media are very dishonest. In fact, in covering my comments, the dishonest media did not explain that I called the fake news the enemy of the people - the fake news. They dropped off the word "fake." And all of the sudden, the story became, the media is the enemy. They take the word "fake" out, and now I'm saying, oh, no, this is no good. But that's the way they are. So I'm not against the media. I'm not against the press. I don't mind bad stories if I deserve them. And I tell you, I love good stories, but we won't - I don't get too many of them.

It is only fair to state, with regard to modern journalists, that they always apologize to one in private for what they have written against one in public.

It is completely irresponsible, if not worse, for members of the media to be calling our press secretary a liar and worse. On Twitter and Facebook and elsewhere. And in articles. That is not the way to start relationships with the press.

I wrote newspaper articles professionally for seven years, and I love newspapers. I'm hopeful that new business models will emerge that allow the newspaper culture to genuinely thrive in the digital age.

It is an honor to take the helm of 'Reliable Sources,' the very best of a very small number of programs about the media's role in society.

The job of the press is to defend their institution, hold the government accountable and freely report and gather information.

There is no democracy without journalism.

That endless book, the newspaper, is our national glory.

No reporter of my generation, whatever his genius, ever really rated spats and a walking stick until he had covered both a lynching and a revolution.

We have standards. Anybody with the kind of journalism experience and professionalism that you have displayed over these years can not work for my program.

Somewhere in the dim recesses of the journalistic soul lies the horrible suspicion: This is really a pretty shallow and maybe unseemly way for a grownup to make a living.

I have so much more compassion for journalists and the work that they have to do, in order to do the jobs that they have to do. I am much more in awe of and am celebratory of great journalism when I see it, and I'm much more critical of bad journalism, or crap masquerading as journalism.

I grew up in newsrooms. I've been in newsrooms since I was 17 years old. Journalism has been like my church; it's been like my identity.

Show me a contented newspaper editor and I will show you a bad newspaper.

I had grown up as a feature writer, and basically my career had been in The National Lampoon and as a magazine editor, and I'd never been a reporter.

Journalism in America is dead. I've been saying it on the air since 2008.

More than illness or death, the American journalist fears standing alone against the whim of his owners or the prejudices of his audience. Deprive William Safire of the insignia of the New York Times, and he would have a hard time selling his truths to a weekly broadsheet in suburban Duluth.

I said in 2008 the media is dead in America. Journalism's dead.

I've been trying to tame our press corps ever since I got into politics, and I've failed miserably. They get to express their opinions sometimes in the form of news.