Adolph Ochs Quotes

A free press is not a privilege but an organic necessity in a great society. Without criticism and reliable and intelligent reporting, the government cannot govern. For there is no adequate way in which it can keep itself informed about what the people of the country are thinking and doing and wanting.

The job of the press is to encourage debate, not to supply the public with information.

I have always been of the opinion that the right kind of journalism is a critical part of our democracy.

There's a longstanding tradition that journalists don't cheer in the press box. They have opinions, like anyone else, but they are expected to keep those opinions out of their work.

Murrow covered something because it needed coverage. He wasn't trying to get an audience just for the sake of it.

We're journalists, and so it's our job to be impartial and provide a fair and thorough assessment of what's happening on the ground from the perspective of what we're able to see.

'Moral police' is my new word. I am very against the media doing moral policing, giving opinions on actor's lives. Media should not become moral police; they should just report.

I think the idea of creating a television news source that is not beholden to corporate interests is nirvana.

Some people call it the 'Al Jazeera spirit' - courage, re-thinking authority, giving a voice to the voiceless. We have never been favored by the authority. The human being is the center of our editorial policy. We are not a TV station that rushes after stars, big names, press conferences, hand-shake journalism.

When I started 'CNN,' I made the decision to stay out of endorsing candidates, and let the doers make up their own minds about politics, that it wasn't going to come from me.

The newspapers, magazines and other journals of the country, it is safe to say, have shed and continue to shed, more light on the public and business affairs of, the nation than any other instrumentality of public; and since informed public opinion is the most potent of all restraints upon misgovernment, the suppression or abridgment of the publicity afforded by a free press cannot be regarded otherwise than with grave concern.

By freedom of the press I mean that no influence, whether of money or power or any other thing, either directs its policy or inclines it to suppression, or advocacy, for any consideration except the common good.

To say that the newspaper press represents public opinion is to administer insult to intelligent men. It is the property of speculators, political leaders, large contractors and railway directors.

Journalist, in my opinion, are mediators between the Information Age and our democracy.

The job of a political correspondent is the challenge the people in power. If you are in power, I will challenge you.

I want to stress the importance of being fair to our readers. You should not impose your own view and prejudice on the readers and try to lead them to a conclusion. As a reader, I understand what a fair report is.

A journalist covering politics, most of us are aware of the necessity to try to be sure we're unbiased in our reporting. That's one of the fundamentals of good journalism.

I want to have a media platform that is an honest broker and not just a mouthpiece for a political party.

Nobody is going to tell Ed Schultz what to say.

On the whole, it seems to me that probably the American press is doing a better job of this mediation, so to speak, between the people and the administration than the press of any other country.

I think cable television is wobbling and I think people aren't going to forget what happened - because you had a situation where one of the candidates was hated, not just disagreed with, hated. You can't have that. If you hate somebody, I've got to step aside or I need tell the audience look, I hate this person. You know I'm not going to give you an objective view of them. But they didn't do that about Donald Trump.

When you look at the New York Times and you pick it up in the morning, at the top of the paper there's three stories that are anti-Trump. Some of them baseless, some of them silly. And at the bottom you get something about WikiLeaks. Same thing with The Washington Post. Way out of control.

Truth is the hardest substance in the world to pin down. But the one certainty is the awesome penalty exacted sooner or later from a society whose reporters stop trying.

Nothing is covered adequately by the BBC. The BBC has become the biggest disappointment - they're just so terrified. And in a way it's not their fault: the parties have used them as a political football.

Politicians, you know Harry Reid hates you. We get it. But when somebody from "The New York Times" or "The Washington Post" is saying this stuff, that's different, that's offensive, that's wrong.