John Hockenberry Quotes & Sayings

One of the great myths about war is that there is a ground zero, a center stage, where the terrible forces unleashed by it can be witnessed, recounted, and replayed like the launching of a rocket. War is a human activity far too large to be contained in the experience of a single reporter in a single place and time in any meaningful way. When it comes, it happens to everyone. Everything is in its path. Yet this is the allure of war reporting, the chance of acquiring some personal mother lode of truth to beam back to the living rooms of a waiting nation. The fear that comes from reporting on a war is as much a fear of missing this mother load as it is of being injured or killed in battle, and it sets reporters apart from the people who have to fight wars. Soldiers have their own agonies to think about as a battle approaches. Missing the war is not generally one of them. — John Hockenberry

An object imbued with intent - it has power, it's treasure, we're drawn to it. An object devoid of intent - it's random, it's imitative, it repels us. It's like a piece of junk mail to be thrown away. — John Hockenberry

I think everybody in news understands that the audience that watches for more than an hour is not your target audience - because those people are on life support. — John Hockenberry

Design [is] the emerging ethos formulating and then answering a very new question: What shall we do now, in the face of the chaos that we have created? — John Hockenberry

At a moment when distortions of Islam are what feed most Americans, Ibrahim Abdul-Matin has done something both practical and inspiring. He persuades us that the imperiled environment is both common struggle and common ground for people who share, it turns out, more than simply God. — John Hockenberry

The song is just the given. It's how you cover it that matters. — John Hockenberry

In general, I think very few people have a sustained interest in news. — John Hockenberry

The media doesn't need a conscience; people need consciences. — John Hockenberry

Design is the courage and brilliance to cover an original and make it different. — John Hockenberry

The idea that humiliation is some capital crime of the spirit is a fiction. The sentences we hand down for losing control and succumbing to physical limits in life are arbitrary acts of self-loathing. All human beings have bodies that define their existence and which can veto the best-laid plans of the mind and soul. — John Hockenberry

I think every journalist understands when they are the beneficiary of hot information that, yes, they have a scoop, but they're also being used. Part of your responsibility as a journalist is to tell the story of why that information is coming to you, consistent with the ground rules of your sourcing. — John Hockenberry

In America access is always about architecture and never about human beings. Among Israelis and Palestinians, access was rarely about anything but people. While in the U.S. a wheelchair stands out as an explicitly separate experience from the mainstream, in the Israel and Arab worlds it is just another thing that can go wrong in a place where things go wrong all the time. — John Hockenberry