Walter Lippmann Quotes

No government ought to be without censors: & where the press is free, no one ever will.

With any bureaucracy, an accountable bureaucracy, we need the press and we need critics to keep us on our toes…. we do wish the press to continue to report and continue to criticize because it is only in that way that the government can continue to improve and meet the aspirations of an increasingly affluent society.

What would this country be like without the press prying to find out what the government is doing?

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

It is only in the freest of nations that people can not only criticize the government, fairly or unfairly, but in extraordinarily few—only the greatest—do the negative criticisms get very wide distribution. Look for the nation where their media are full of criticisms, and there you will find a nation sufficiently free and confident to consider possible improvement from any and all sources.

The back and forth between the press and government is essential to any good democracy.

Thank God for our form of government. The media won't let there be any cover-up.

Accountability and democratic choice, I deeply believe, are guaranteed by rigorous scrutiny only.

What I'm thinking about more and more these days is simply the importance of transparency, and Jefferson's saying that he'd rather have a free press without a government than a government without a free press.

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.

Public agencies should be criticized.

Every organization has men and women who will be sure that the news gets out when it is good news. The problem is with the bad news. That is the challenge of democracy

A free press can of course be good or bad, but most certainly, without freedom it will never be anything but bad.

The political misrepresentation of facts is one of the incidents of a free press in every free country.

The press must be free; it has always been so and much evil has been corrected by it. If Government finds itself annoyed by it, let it examine its own conduct and it will find the cause.

The fourth estate which if not well looked to, will turn us all out of doors.

Democracy without a free press is inconceivable.

Democracy requires that those who bear the consequences of decisions have enough knowledge to hold the decision-makers accountable.

The function of a newspaper in a democracy is to stand as a sort of chronic opposition to the reigning quacks.

The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.

Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people

You’re doing the people’s business and they have a right to know.

Of all times in time of war the press should be free.

A free press stands as one of the great interpreters between the government and the people. To allow it to be fettered is to fetter ourselves.

Only in democratic countries is there the beginning of a suspicion that the old axioms about the press being the bulwark of liberty is something that affects the daily life of the people--that it is a living warning rather than an ancient wisecrack. A people that wants to be free must arm itself with a free press..