American Journalist Quotes & Sayings

Athenaeum, or Jonathan Edwards at thirteen entering Yale College, and while yet of a tender age shining in the horizon of American literature; while the same age finds H. W. Longfellow writing for the Portland Gazette. At fourteen John Quincy Adams was private secretary to Francis H. Dana, American Minister to Russia; at fifteen Benjamin Franklin was writing for the New England Courant, and at an early age became a noted journalist. Benjamin West at sixteen had painted "The Death of Socrates," at seventeen George Bancroft had won a degree in history, Washington Irving had gained — Charles Stewart Given

Assange is not a 'journalist' any more than the 'editor' of al-Qaeda's new English-language magazine 'Inspire' is a 'journalist.' He is an anti-American operative with blood on his hands. — Sarah Palin

Journalists become candidates for cardiac arrest when they see or hear an African American disagreeing with an African American. We would become inauthentic if we did not have disagreements with this president. — John Conyers

More than illness or death, the American journalist fears standing alone against the whim of his owners or the prejudices of his audience. Deprive William Safire of the insignia of the New York Times, and he would have a hard time selling his truths to a weekly broadsheet in suburban Duluth. — Lewis H. Lapham

A British journalist, Sydney Brooks, writing in the North American Review, gauged America to be just as isolationist as ever. And why not, he asked? "The United States is remote, unconquerable, huge, without hostile neighbors or any neighbors at all of anything like her own strength, and lives exempt in an almost unvexed tranquility from the contentions and animosities and the ceaseless pressure and counter-pressure that distract the close-packed older world." While easy in concept, neutrality in — Erik Larson

Why, to give another suggestive example, did it take an American journalist sixty-five days to get official permission (including, after a wait of up to five weeks, a Food — Niall Ferguson

I had an American journalist say to me, "Is it true you wrote the whole of the first novel on napkins?" I was tempted to say, "On teabags, I used to save them. — J.K. Rowling

The "public" does not work - a sentence like "most of the American public works in the service industry" would never appear in a magazine or paper, and if a journalist were to attempt to write such a sentence, her editor would certainly change it to something else. It is especially odd since the public does apparently have to go to work: — David Graeber

So what exactly would an ecological detective set loose in an American supermarket discover, were he to trace the items in his shopping cart all the way back to the soil? The notion began to occupy me a few years ago, after I realized that the straightforward question 'What should I eat?' could no longer be answered without first addressing two other even more straightforward questions: 'What am I eating? And where in the world did it come from?' Not very long ago an eater didn't need a journalist to answer these questions. The fact that today one so often does suggests a pretty good start on a working definition of industrial food: Any food whose provenance is so complex or obscure that it requires expert help to ascertain. — Michael Pollan

Until the arrival of Spanish troops in 1920, Chefchaouen had been visited by just three Westerners. Two were missionary explorers: Charles de Foucauld, a Frenchman who spent just an hour in the town in 1883, disguised as a Jewish rabbi, and William Summers, an American who was poisoned by the townsfolk here in 1892. The third, in 1889, was the British journalist Walter Harris, whose main impulse, as described in his book, Land of an African Sultan, was "the very fact that there existed within thirty hours' ride of Tangier a city in which it was considered an utter impossibility for a Christian to enter". Thankfully, Chefchaouen today is more welcoming towards outsiders, and a number of the Medina's newer guesthouses now include owners hailing from Britain, Italy and the former Christian enemy, Spain. — Daniel Jacobs

The author writes that the central conflict within journalist and seller of the American way Henry Luce was between his curiosity and his certitude. — David Halberstam

Would that it were so! ... That the American military were targeting journalists. — Ann Coulter

I got a call froma cynical young American journalist ... You know the sort. He's lived in the Middle East for a little over five minutes so assumes he knows us natives well. I sip at a skinny mocha frappe while he fires off big important questions about 'the political landscape' and 'Islamic thought'. I stare at him blankly. — Amy Mowafi

A Pulitzer Prize is awaiting the journalist who can find an American who dies of hunger, and probably the Nobel Prize for literature as well. — Tom Bethell

2014 Raid in Northern Syria In an attempt to find kidnapped journalist James Foiley as well as other American hostages, Delta Forces operators were inserted into northern Syria on 04 July 2014. Per information from witnesses, after tearing down anti-aircraft weapons, the Delta Forces operators attacked an ISIS base. The ISIS base was torn down and all ISIS soldiers were killed at the cost of an American who sustained wounds during the operations. The operation was a failure since no hostages were found. — John Winters

As a journalist, I try to avoid talking to American diplomats, because I am stunned again and again by just how little grasp they have of what people are really feeling in a country. Especially CIA guys. Maybe they're just really good at playing stupid, but I don't think so. — Scott Anderson

As journalist, I'm responsible to the American people, not to the military of the United States. — Amy Goodman

Doubt has also been cast on the value of McKeith's certified membership of the American Association of Nutritional Consultants, especially since Guardian journalist Ben Goldacre managed to buy the same membership online for his dead cat for $60. — Ben Goldacre

Being an American journalist can put people on the defensive. In countries where people assume the press is partisan, like in Lebanon, or where it had essentially become an extension of the government, like in Iraq, people tend to see a journalist as an agent of his or her government. That can be dangerous if the United States military is occupying their country, or aligned with their enemies. — Annia Ciezadlo

It is difficult for my fellow countrymen who have never lived abroad to understand that until a foreign man is about sixty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he'd like to punch an American in the face. Even people like the Chinese, who mostly like us, think of us
at least partly
as loud, fat, poorly dressed, overprivileged, hectoring, naive, arrogant, self-righteous bullies with little knowledge and no interest in any culture other than our own. I once had a conversation with a Japanese journalist who said to me, "You don't seem like an American." When I asked him, slightly hurt, why he said that, he replied, "Because you listen. — Matthew Polly

I got into journalism not to be a journalist but to try to change American foreign policy. I'm a corny person. I was a dreamer predating my journalistic life, so I got into journalism as a means to try to change the world. — Samantha Power

I was just not cut out to be an American journalist. In England, I could phone my editor and say 'Do you want an interview with X?' and get an immediate yes or no. At Vanity Fair I had to 'pitch ideas' and then go through layers of editors, all of whom asked what my 'angle' was going to be. I have always deeply hated and resented this question. If you have an angle on someone, it means you have already decided what to write before you meet, so you really might as well not bother interviewing them (126). — Lynn Barber

American journalist: If you were to give advice to a woman, what would it be?
Edith Piaf: Love.
American journalist: To a young girl?
Edith Piaf: Love.
American journalist: To a child?
Edith Piaf: Love. — Edith Piaf

The journalist Walter Lippmann identified in Henry Ford, for all his peculiarity, a common strain of "primitive Americanism." The industrialist's conviction that he could make the world conform to his will was founded on a faith that success in economic matters should, by extension, allow capitalists to try their hands "with equal success" at "every other occupation." "Mr. Ford is neither a crank nor a freak," Lippmann insisted, but "merely the logical exponent of American prejudices about wealth and success. — Greg Grandin

You ever hear about that experiment an American journalist did in Moscow in the 1970s? He just lined up at some building, nothing special about it, just a random door. Sure enough, someone got in line behind him, then a couple more, and before you knew it, they were backed up around the block. No one asked what the line was for. They just assumed it was worth it. I can't say if that story was true. Maybe it's an urban legend, or a cold war myth. Who knows? — Max Brooks

I can work in London. A British journalist asked me if I had any trouble working with an English crew, as an American, and I said I might have if I was from Scotland, but I'm from Massachusetts, which is sort of Oxfordshire, but more intellectual. That's kind of unforgivable but you've got to let them have it. — William Monahan

But being an American woman married to an Arab guy - and a Muslim to boot! - put me in a different category. People would open up, and tell me things that they would never tell another journalist, no matter how persistent. — Annia Ciezadlo

To me, politics is culture. I became a journalist, and later a filmmaker, to get to know my new country and my volatile place in it as a gay, undocumented Filipino-American. — Jose Antonio Vargas

I know of no American who starts from a higher level of aspiration than the journalist ... He plans to be both an artist and a moralist
a master of lovely words and merchant of sound ideas. He ends, commonly, as the most depressing jackass of his community
that is, if his career goes on to what is called a success. — H.L. Mencken

We must sober up and admit that too many of the Republicans and the Democrats have played us, lied to us and stolen from us, while the getaway car was driven by the media. A media that can no longer claim with a straight face the role of journalist. Journalists print the things the powerful don't want printed. What they do is public relations. Those PR firms will not print the truth about the average American who finds himself concerned with the direction of our country today. So we must. We are not violent. We are not racist. We are not anti immigrant. We are not anti-government. And we will not be silent anymore. — Glenn Beck

Last year, the journalist Malcolm Gladwell conducted a survey of chief executive officers of Fortune 500 companies for his book Blink. He discovered that while in the US population 14.5 per cent of all men are 6ft (1.83m) or taller, among CEOs of Fortune 500 companies the proportion is 58 per cent. And while 3.9 per cent of American adults are 6ft 2in or taller, almost a third of the CEOs were that tall. — Daniel Finkelstein

I think being Canadian helps you as a journalist in America, because you're sort of on the outside watching this big party going on, and you're sort of taking mental notes as it goes on. I think if you're in the party the whole time, you don't notice it as much. And I think Canadians are very good observers of American culture. — Graydon Carter

I'm a mother, I'm a journalist, I'm an American; I'm all of those things, and it really complicates your job when you have all these things come into play. — Paula Zahn