Journalism Ethics Quotes

If I had my choice I would kill every reporter in the world, but I am sure we would be getting reports from Hell before breakfast.

A lot of stories that have fascinated me are tabloid stories that have come from other newspapers, like 'The New York Times.'

If I'd written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people - including me - would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.

The newspaper is a moral force second only to the church. It is a political power superior to parties. It is an instrument of justice coequal with the court.

It's all storytelling, you know. That's what journalism is all about.

Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people's vanity, ignorance or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse.

The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason. There's also a negative side.

The press is, almost without exception, corrupt.

Is journalism a profession that serves the public by maintaining high standards, or is it a social construct that should be redesigned to directly serve certain social goods? Some argue that all journalism involves bias, either hidden or revealed. But it is one thing to say that objectivity and fairness are ultimately unreachable. It is another to cease grasping for them. That would be a world of purely private truths, in which the boldest liars and demagogues would thrive.

To a newspaperman, a human being is an item with the skin wrapped around it.

We journalists are never so idiotic as when we analyze things that we shouldn't be analyzing.

I don't think Roger Ailes is ham-fisted.

I think that 'Fox News' is fair and balanced.

Never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel.

The judgment means a lot. As a journalist being accused of invading someone's privacy, there is always a risk that it will stick to your name.

I'm a journalism junkie.

I heard that after you throw away a 'New York Times,' it takes over a hundred years for the lies to biodegrade.

I think as journalists, we have to keep our distance from power.

In my view, far from deserving condemnation for their courageous reporting, the New York Times, the Washington Post and other newspapers should be commended for serving the purpose that the Founding Fathers saw so clearly.

I'm a writer. I've been a journalist for my whole adult life.

I loathe and despise the media in a way I did not think possible.

There's no worse crime in journalism these days than simply deciding something's a story because Drudge links to it.

I think people are smart enough to sort it out. They know when they're watching one of these food fight shows where journalists sit around and yell and scream at each other, versus serious issue reporting.

Even in the news division of Fox - which I want to make very clear and I have from the very beginning - I am not a journalist. In fact, I wear that as a badge of honor.

People everywhere confuse what they read in newspapers with news.