17 Not-So-Nice Quotes About Journalism

S/he who wields the pen, wields the power. So journalists have led us to believe how valuable they are. For example, CBS News posted the “Best Journalism Quotes Ever. “All are laudatory, natch.

For a bit of counterbalance, here are some less biased sources of judgment about journalism.

I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters.” ―Mahatma Gandhi

(Journalism’s) pretensions are enormous but its achievements are insignificant. ―H. L. Mencken

People sometimes imagine that just because they have access to so many newspapers, radio and TV channels, they will get an infinity of different opinions. Then they discover that things are just the opposite: the power of these loudspeakers only amplifies the opinion prevalent at a certain time, to the point where it covers any other opinion. ―Amin Maalouf

When’s the last time CNN broke an important story or really made the government angry? …They simply pass on the government’s message to their audience. — Cenk Uygur

No honest journalist should be willing to describe himself or herself as embedded. To say, ‘I’m an embedded journalist’ is to say, “I’m a government propagandist.” ―Noam Chomsky

CNN wants to deny reality. I, too, used to drink the Kool-Aid that it was a top journalism operation that reports without bias. — Daryn Kagan

All newspaper and journalistic activity is an intellectual brothel from which there is no retreat. — Leo Tolstoy

If a person is not talented enough to be a novelist, not smart enough to be a lawyer, and his hands too shaky to perform operations, he becomes a journalist. ― Norman Mailer

It is our duty to be sure that we do not permit our prejudices to show. That is simply basic journalism. — Walter Cronkite

“Most journalism is activism. — Mike Cernovich

Journalism has changed… partisanship is very much a part of journalism now. — Leslie Moonves

History is just journalism and you know how reliable that is. ― Joseph Campbell

Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits. ―Hunter S. Thompson

I became a journalist because I did not want to rely on newspapers for information. ―Christopher Hitchens

What you read in the newspapers, hear on the radio and see on television, is hardly even the truth as seen by experts; it is the wishful thinking of journalists, seen through filters of prejudice and ignorance. ―Hans Eysenck

If they’re preordained dogmatists for a cause, they can’t be very good journalists. ―Walter Cronkite

The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers. ―Thomas Jefferson

The takeaway

Do take your journalism with more than one grain of salt.

I read this aloud on YouTube.