Journalists Power Quotes & Sayings

I'd been surprised by the depth of emotion that was invested in that curiously archaic phrase 'great power'. What would it mean, I'd asked myself, to the lives of working journalists, salaried technocrats and so on if India achieved 'great power status'? What were the images evoked by this tag?
Now, walking through this echoing old palace, looking at the pictures in the corridors, this aspiration took on, for the first time, the contours of an imagined reality. This is what the nuclearists wanted: to sign treaties, to be pictured with the world's powerful, to hang portraits on their walls, to become ancestors. On the bomb they had pinned their hopes of bringing it all back. — Amitav Ghosh

US journalists, for years overwhelmingly enamored of Barack Obama, were now commonly speaking of him in these terms: as some sort of grave menace to press freedoms, the most repressive leader in this regard since Richard Nixon. That was quite a remarkable turn for a politician who was ushered into power vowing the most transparent administration in US history. — Glenn Greenwald

Eventually, I came to understand that a group of people who wield enormous power happen, oddly enough, to espouse some of the very same ideals imparted to me by people in Africa and central Asia who have no power at all. The reason for this, in my view, is that members of the armed forces have worked on the ground-in many cases, during three or four tours of duty-on a level that very few diplomats, academicians, journalists, or policy makers can match. And among other things, this experience has imbued soldiers with the gift of empathy. — Greg Mortenson

Sycophancy toward those who hold power is a fact in every regime, and especially in a democracy, where, unlike tyranny, there is an accepted principle of legitimacy that breaks the inner will to resist ... Flattery of the people and incapacity to resist public opinion are the democratic vices, particularly among writers, artists, journalists and anyone else who is dependent on an audience. — Allan Bloom

Don't you believe it. I'll tell you what life is. It's gaol, it's not knowing where to get some money. Worms and cataract, cancer. You hear 'em shrieking from the upper windows- children being born. It's dying slowly. — Graham Greene

We journalists love writing about eccentrics. We hate writing about impenetrable, boring people. It makes us look bad: the duller the interviewee, the duller the prose. If you want to get away with wielding true, malevolent power, be boring. — Jon Ronson

Our strength consists in our speed and in our brutality. Genghis Khan led millions of women and children to slaughter - with premeditation and a happy heart. History sees in him solely the founder of a state. It's a matter of indifference to me what a weak western European civilization will say about me. I have issued the command - and I'll have anybody who utters but one word of criticism executed by a firing squad - that our war aim does not consist in reaching certain lines, but in the physical destruction of the enemy. Accordingly, I have placed my death-head formation in readiness - for the present only in the East - with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language. Only thus shall we gain the living space (Lebensraum) which we need. Who, after all, speaks to-day of the annihilation of the Armenians? — Adolf Hitler

Journalism is the only profession explicitly protected by the U.S. Constitution, because journalists are supposed to be the check and balance on government. We're supposed to be holding those in power accountable. We're not supposed to be their megaphone. That's what the corporate media have become. — Amy Goodman

Journalists are more powerful now than they've ever been, and we all know what power does. Anyone who disses the media is really asking for it. But it is the case that the journalists are what they are - world famous for vulgarity, alcoholism, spite. — Charles McGrath

The politicians think the journalists have power, the journalists think bankers have power, bankers think lawyers have power. The truth is, nobody has power. — Rory Stewart

Today, journalists more than any other cohort of professionals, are responsible for the confusion that surrounds power and its criminality in contemporary society. As Janet Malcolm said in another context, '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.' — Martin Walker

Journalists don't have audiences - they have publics who can respond instantly and globally, positively or negatively, with a great deal more power than the traditional letters to the editor could wield. — Howard Rheingold

Does the mainstream media have a liberal bias? On a couple of things, maybe. Compared to the American public at large, probably a slightly higher percentage of journalists, because of thier enhanced power of discernment, realize they know a gay person or two, and are, therefore, less frightened of them. — Al Franken

When it comes to arrogance, power, and lack of accountability, journalists are probably the only people on the planet who make lawyers look good. — Steven Brill

The Factor concept is very simple: Watch all of those in power, including and especially the media, so they don't injure or exploit the folks, everyday Americans. Never before in the United States had a television news guy dared to criticize other journalists on a regular basis. The late Peter Jennings, a friend, told me I was crazy to do it. "These people will not allow anyone to scrutinize them," he said. "They will come after you with a vengeance." And so they have. — Bill O'Reilly

Delhi is not just a national capital, it is one of the political ultimates, one of the prime movers. It was born to power, war and glory. It rose to greatness not because holy men saw visions there but because it commanded the strategic routes from the northwest, where the conquerors came from, into the rich flatlands of the Ganges delta. Delhi is a soldiers' town, a politicians' town, journalists', diplomats' town. It is Asia's Washington, though not so picturesque, and lives by ambition, rivalry and opportunism. — Jan Morris

It's only when journalists understand the role they play in this propaganda, it's only when they realize they can't be both independent, honest journalists and agents of power, that things will begin to change. — John Pilger

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

Comedians, such as yourself, Jon Stewart and others, are a valuable supplement, and here's why: Good journalism at its best frequently speaks truth to power. What's happened with journalists - again, I don't except myself from this criticism - in some ways we've lost our guts. We need a spine transplant. What's happened is comedians, in their own way, speak truth to power and fill that vacuum that we in journalism have too often left, particularly post 9/11. — Dan Rather

You turn on the TV, and you see very bland interviews. Journalists in the United States are very cozy with power, very close to those in power. — Jorge Ramos

Also, even if technocrats provide reasonable estimates of a risk, which itself is an iffy enterprise, they cannot dictate what level of risk people ought to accept. People might object to a nuclear power plant that has a minuscule risk of a meltdown not because they overestimate the risk, but because they feel that the cost of a catastrophe, no matter how remote, are too dreadful. And of course any of these trade-offs may be unacceptable if people perceive that the benefits would go to the wealthy and powerful while they themselves absorb the risks. Nonetheless, understanding the difference between our best science and our ancient ways of thinking can only make our individual and collective decisions better informed. It can help scientists and journalists explain a new technology in the face of the most common misunderstandings. And it can help all of us understand the technology so that we can accept or reject it on grounds that we can justify to ourselves and to others. — Steven Pinker

And journalism itself has changed. News organizations and some journalists have transformed from their traditional role as watchdogs of power into institutions of power themselves with an ability, indeed, a susceptibility, to abuse that power. — Joan Konner

My experience with journalists authorize me to record that a very large number of them are ignorant, lazy, opinionated, intellectually dishonest, and inadequately supervised.... They have huge power, and many of them are extremely reckless. — Conrad Black

The most important responsibility we have as journalists is to question those who are in power. I honestly believe that. — Jorge Ramos

General David Petraeus was so successful at getting on covers of magazines, having journalists fall in love with him, that in fact he was able to use that power to go around the normal chain of command. — Michael Hastings

The business of funding digging journalists is important to encourage. It cannot be replaced by bloggers who don't have access to politicians, who don't have easy access to official documents, who aren't able to buttonhole people in power. — Andrew Marr

My coach told me, "Larry, no matter how much you work at it, there's always someone out there who's working just a little harder - if you take 150 practice shots, he's taking 200." And that drove me. — Larry Bird

Our Republic and its press will rise or fall together," Pulitzer wrote. "An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery. A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself. The power to mould the future of the Republic will be in the hands of the journalists of future generations. — Joseph Pulitzer

When journalists forget that our job is to question and annoy those in power, there can be huge consequences. — Jorge Ramos

Am I such a slave as that? Dependent on a man to complete me! I thought I couldn't be anything without him- I can be my own creator! — Nan Shepherd

There is so much that we need to do for our country. I don't think that we can afford to wait. — Aung San Suu Kyi

Strange, the impact of History, the grip it had on us, yet it was nothing but words. Accidental accretions for the most part, leaving most of the story out. We have not yet begun to explore the true power of the Word, I thought. What if we broke all the rules, played games with the evidence, manipulated language itself, made History a partisan ally? Of course, the Phantom was already onto this, wasn't he? Ahead of us again. What were his dialectical machinations if not the dissolution of the natural limits of language, the conscious invention of a space, a spooky artificial no-man's land, between logical alternatives. I loved to debate both sides of any issue, but thinking about that strange space in between made me sweat. Paradox was one thing I hated more than psychiatrists and lady journalists. — Robert Coover

No real journalist makes $5 million a year ... Those in power fear and dislike real journalists. — Chris Hedges

EZR7.6 this Ezra went up from Babylon: and he was a ready scribe in the law of Moses, which Jehovah, the God of Israel, had given; and the king granted him all his request, according to the hand of Jehovah his God upon him. EZR7.7 And there went up some of the children of Israel, and of the priests, and the Levites, and the singers, and the porters, and the Nethinim, unto Jerusalem, in the seventh year of Artaxerxes the king. EZR7.8 And he came to Jerusalem in the fifth month, which was in the seventh year of the king. EZR7.9 For upon the first day of the first month began he to go up from Babylon; and on the first day of the fifth month came he to Jerusalem, according to the good hand of his God upon him. EZR7.10 For Ezra had set his heart to seek the law of Jehovah, and to do it, and to teach in Israel statutes and ordinances. — Anonymous

The male elites that run most countries are exceedingly uncomfortable with the subject of AIDS because it's a sexually transmitted disease. — Richard Holbrooke

It's how they've stayed popular for so long. By not doing anything that will make them look like fools. They never leave home without their safety nets and I think, good for them, but the thing with safety nets is this. I got tangled in them so many times and the Stella girls always seemed to leave me dangling, upside down, to the point where I almost couldn't breathe anymore. — Melina Marchetta

If I wasn't an actor and I watched my films, I could easily be like 'This guy's a clown,' you know? — Seann William Scott

If you expose what it is that we're doing, if you inform your fellow citizens about all the things that we're doing in the dark, we will destroy you. This is what their spate of prosecutions of whistleblowers have [sic] been about. It's what trying to threaten journalists, to criminalize what they do, is about. It's to create a climate of fear, so that nobody will bring accountability to them.
It's not going to work. I think it's starting to backfire, because it shows their true character and exactly why they can't be trusted to operate with power in secret. And we're certainly not going to be deterred by it in any way. The people who are going to be investigated are not the people reporting on this, but are people like Dianne Feinstein and her friends in the National Security Agency, who need investigation and transparency for all the things that they've been doing. — Glenn Greenwald