Press Responsibility Quotes

Some degree of abuse is inseparable from the proper use of every thing; and in no instance is this more true than in that of the press. It has accordingly been decided, by the practice of the states, that it is better to leave a few of its noxious branches to their luxuriant growth, than, by pruning them away, to injure the vigor of those yielding the proper fruits. And can the wisdom of this policy be doubted by any one who reflects that to the press alone, checkered as it is with abuses, the world is indebted for all the triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression?

It is a free press...There are laws to protect the freedom of the press's speech, but none that are worth anything to protect the people from the press.

I think there are a lot of people who feel very passionate about needing to have an open debate. And I think it's a real sign of leadership that the press needs to be actually standing up for that.

Business pages of American newspapers should not read like a scandal sheet.

The chief danger which threatens the influence and honor of the press is the tendency of its liberty to degenerate into license.

Reporters are faced with the daily choice of painstakingly researching stories or writing whatever people tell them. Both approaches pay the same.

Speaking in general terms it was always easy to get any print to say any injurious thing about a citizen in a newspaper, but it was next to impossible to get that paper or any other to right an injured man.

It is the business of the journalist … to stand in permanent Opposition.

Some degree of abuse is inseparable from the proper use of every thing; and in no instance is this more true than in that of the press. It has accordingly been decided, by the practice of the states, that it is better to leave a few of its noxious branches to their luxuriant growth, than, by pruning them away, to injure the vigor of those yielding the proper fruits.

The press should form a fortress of steel round the republic. The republic has a right to demand this from journalists. The struggle is not over; the press has a duty to convey this truth to the nation and safeguard its unity.

In revealing the workings of government that led to the Vietnam War, the newspapers nobly did precisely that which the Founders hoped and trusted they would do.

These newspaper reporters... ever since Sullivan versus New York Times... have got a license to lie.

The 1st Amendment does not mandate that the press be accurate.

… the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government's power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. 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. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell.

We don't go into journalism to be popular. It is our job to seek the truth and put constant pressure on our leaders until we get answers.

It is so difficult to draw a clear line of separation between the abuse and the wholesome use of the press, that as yet we have found it better to trust the public judgment, rather than the magistrate, with the discrimination between truth and falsehood. And hitherto the public judgment has performed that office with wonderful correctness.

We believe that the remedy to any harm resulting from press freedom lies in press freedom itself.

We have got to make sure there is proper independent scrutiny and accountability for people in the press, just as there should be in any other industry where things go wrong. But let's not try and think it is for politicians or governments to tell people what they stick in newspapers. That is deeply illiberal.

During this course of administration, and in order to disturb it, the artillery of the press has been leveled against us, charged with whatsoever its licentiousness could devise or dare. These abuses of an institution so important to freedom and science are deeply to be regretted, inasmuch as they tend to lessen its usefulness and to sap its safety.

I think the press gets lazy once a certain kind of image is out there. It just adheres, rather than the press trying to break that down.

Given what the media have put the country through this past decade, it must come as a surprise to most Americans that the press has a code of ethics.

The press is supposed to watch the powerful. And not throw in with them.

That this liberty [of the press] is often carried to excess; that it has sometimes degenerated into licentiousness, is seen and lamented, but the remedy has not yet been discovered. Perhaps it is an evil inseparable from the good with which it is allied; perhaps it is a shoot which cannot be stripped from the stalk without wounding vitally the plant from which it is torn. However desirable those measures might be which might correct without enslaving the press, they have never yet been devised in America.

The first duty of the Press is to obtain the earliest and most correct intelligence of the time, and instantly, by disclosing them to make them the common property of the nation.

I think it's time for the people and the press, in particular, to be more vigilant about not giving equal weight to lies as they give the truth.