Tabloid Quotes & Sayings

The rule of thumb for all news operations is that stories are assigned their importance on the basis of what affects or interests the greatest number of one's readers or viewers. Depending on the nature of the newspaper or broadcast, the balance between what "affects" and what "interests" is quite different. The first criteria of a responsible newspaper such as The New York Times is going to be that which their readers need to know about their world that day - those developments that in one way or another might affect their health, their pocketbooks, the future of themselves and their children. The first criterion of the tabloid is that which "interests" its readers - gossip, sex, scandal. — Walter Cronkite

My dream is someday to have a bank of TVs, where all the different channels could be on and I could be monitoring them. I would love that. The more the better. I love the tabloid stuff. The trashier the program is, the more I feel it's TV ... Because that's TV's mode. That's the Age of Hollywood. The idea of PBS - heavy-duty Masterpiece Theater, Bill Moyers - I hate all that. — Camille Paglia

I am a person. I am not a soap opera. There is never going to be a next [tabloid] installment about my life because my own stuff is my own stuff. — Kate Winslet

(An astrologer of a London tabloid was once fired by means of a letter from his editor which began, "As you will no doubt have foreseen.") — Christopher Hitchens

We define what tabloid is. We're the granddaddy of all tabloids. — Mike Walker

We are all deeply ashamed by choices we have made and things we have done. Many of these things are worthy of the raunchiest tabloid. These things bring pain and misery into our lives. But even with that, if we love and trust God and turn from those things to God, then He will still love us and be able to use us in powerful ways. — Vance C. Kessler

It started with a dose of mercury bichloride, then a measure of chloroform. Several tumblers of alcohol followed, and then a lead sash weight to the man's head. It finished with picture wire pulled tight around the victim's neck. To such a rare case, the word overkill could be applied without hyperbole. The complicated murder of Albert Snyder put the men of the medical examiner's office - especially Alexander Gettler - on public display. It rapidly became a very public event, the story of the spring for tabloid newspapers and their sensation-loving readers. — Anonymous

These tabloid magazines - I think they're hideous and the downfall of society. — Scarlett Johansson

When you combine a media - bent on exploiting tabloid-type stories to boost ratings and circulation by innuendo and titillation - with unhappy or opportunistic individuals who have nothing going for them in their own lives, you get a bitter brew. — Frederick Lenz

She quotes Robert Louis Stevenson about how young writers must read like predators. And she says that all of us, not just writers, must read like predators. For books are food, she said, for every single one of us. — Pete Hamill

In the garden of tabloid delight, there is always a clean towel and another song. — Lewis H. Lapham

For some people, an event happens and they are thrown into a tabloid feeding ground. — Clive Owen

Well, I mean, the real attack on truth is tabloid journalism in the United States. — Julian Assange

This extreme treatment was among the proliferating regimens developed in response to the stunning increase in nervous disorders diagnosed around the turn of the century. Commentators and clinicians cited a number of factors related to the stresses of modern civilization: the increased speed of communication facilitated by the telegraph and railroad; the "unmelodious" clamor of city life replacing the "rhythmical" sounds of nature; and the rise of the tabloid press that exploded "local horrors" into national news. These nervous diseases became an epidemic among "the ultracompetitive businessman and the socially active woman. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

There was and still is a tremendous fear that poor and working-class Americans might one day come to understand where their political interests reside. Personally, I think the elites worry too much about that. We dumb working folk were clubbed into submission long ago, and now require only proper medication for our high levels of cholesterol, enough alcohol to keep the sludge moving through our arteries, and a 24/7 mind-numbing spectacle of titties, tabloid TV, and terrorist dramas. Throw in a couple of new flavours of XXL edible thongs, and you've got a nation of drowsing hippos who will never notice that our country has been looted, or even that we have become homeless ourselves. — Joe Bageant

There's no way that any tabloid can survive if it doesn't get women to read it. — Pete Hamill

I refuse to discuss tabloid rumors. — LeAnn Rimes

Oh, please." Hickory looked skeptical. "Your show is pure sensationalism. Tripe tabloid at its worst - " Wendy interrupted him. "We've met before, Mr. Hickory." That slowed him down. "Have we?" "When I was an assistant producer on A Current Affair. I booked you as an expert on the Robert Blake murder trial." He — Harlan Coben

Thanks to the tabloid campaigns I have many death threats and I was very pleased to get another one the other day. — Tony Benn

My career suffered massively because I had a reputation for being a very tabloid person. — Sienna Miller

I wanted to reject it all because I was sick of being perfect. I was so bored with normality and dreams of poster boys and tabloid covers. — J. Merridew

It's like tabloid news programs that talk about how horrible something is, while at the same time they're glorifying it as their top story. — Daisy Berkowitz

Never steal another reporter's story; never take the last of another reporter's ammo; never mess with another reporter's computer. Those are the rules, unless you work for a tabloid, where they replace "never" with "always" ... — Mira Grant

These pop songs almost feel like tabloid journalism, in a way. It's c**p that people seem to like. And I don't know if it has meaning. I don't know if one of the pop songs of the summer has any fibre in it. People are consuming it, and is it healthy? ... Maybe there's some healthy property or some restorative property that I'm not receiving. It seems like it has a really high fructose content. — Eddie Vedder

Only the pun remains. The pun, beloved of Shakespeare, children and tabloid headline-writers, is normally eschewed in the modern, sophisticated circles in which I move. — Arthur Smith

It took many months in court, but the tabloid eventually published a total retraction and paid substantial damages in an out-of-court settlement. The money went to the Special Olympics in Great Britain. — Arnold Schwarzenegger

Tabloid discussion of bad children always blames baby-boomer liberals, careerist mothers and fashion-crazed Nathan Barley types who think it's all enormously funny. But the centre-leftish psycho-thinker Oliver James says it's all down to the Thatcher-and-after culture of turbo-capitalism, making people acquisitive and unsatisfied. — Peter York

[A 2005 response to doping allegations] Unfortunately, the witch hunt continues and tomorrow's article is nothing short of tabloid journalism. The paper even admits in its own article that the science in question here is faulty and that I have no way to defend myself. They state: 'There will therefore be no counter-exam nor regulatory prosecutions, in a strict sense, since defendant's rights cannot be respected.' I will simply restate what I have said many times: I have never taken performance enhancing drugs. — Lance Armstrong

I could take all the cartoons in the tabloid newspapers, but I couldn't take my daughter punching me in the belly and asking why I was so fat. That was my inspiration to lose the weight. And probably the last time anyone hurt my feelings. — Al Sharpton

I don't mind my friends calling me "Thornes," but the fact of people calling me "Prickly Thornes" draws the line. — Simi Sunny

No one goes to BrooklynVegan to read about content, they just go for drama. It's a tabloid, the scum of indie. — Caroline Polachek

Twitter hates tabloids, but Twitter is constantly acting like a tabloid, repeating the mistakes of the things we're hoping to better. — Jon Ronson

A lot of the tabloid stories are written so well, they're very clever and very funny. But you have to focus on what's really important and not read them - don't dive into it and don't get caught up in it. — Calista Flockhart

As great as it is, 'Vogue' won't change a designer's business. But if an unknown brand is worn by a certain person in a tabloid, it will be the biggest designer within a week. — Rachel Zoe

I've come up in the scripted world, and I have wished there were more time slots for us to tell compelling scripted stories and not fill the airwaves with a lot of fluff and tabloid entertainment. — Ralph Macchio

Look, I like you." Blunt was the only way to handle this type of situation. "But if we date-even just one date to the movies, or a quick lunch in a hospital cafeteria, you're going to become tabloid fodder. Strangers meet and decide to date all the time. People have one-night stands all the time. Couplesbreak up all the time. But with me? Or anyone in my family? All of that makes front-page news. — Nichole Chase

The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing. — Oscar Wilde

My whole life is reading tabloid magazines. It's really sad, because that's what my show is all about - what is going on with celebrities. So I have to know everything. — Chelsea Handler

I think if you had to choose between running a tabloid and being president of the United States, of course you'd run the tabloid, especially in New York. — Pete Hamill

No tabloid will ever print the startling news that the mummified body of Jesus of Nazareth has been discovered in old Jerusalem. Christians have no carefully embalmed body enclosed in a glass case to worship. Thank God, we have an empty tomb. The glorious fact that the empty tomb proclaims to us is that life for us does not stop when death comes. Death is not a wall, but a door. — Peter Marshall

When I started out as a model, I took things for granted. Because I bagged work thanks to my looks, I didn't give my body any importance. I was a couch potato who'd eat anything. Then, in 2005, a tabloid ran a story calling me fat. I thought, 'I'm famous. How can I be fat?' It was a slap. I decided to get fit. — Bipasha Basu

Quietly he read, restraining himself, the first column and, yielding but resisting, began the second. Midway, his last resistance yielding, he allowed his bowels to ease themselves quietly as he read, reading still patiently, that slight constipation of yesterday quite gone. Hope it's not too big bring on piles again. No, just right. So. Ah! Costive one tabloid of cascara sagrada. Life might be so. It did not move or touch him but it was something quick and neat. Print anything now. Silly season. He read on, seated calm above his own rising smell. Neat certainly. Matcham often thinks of the master-stroke by which he won the laughing witch who now. Begins and ends morally. Hand in hand. Smart. He glanced back through what he had read and, while feeling his water flow quietly, he envied kindly Mr Beaufoy who had written it and received payment of three pounds thirteen and six. — James Joyce

Tabloid news is tabloid news. — Elizabeth Edwards

report that because the tabloid in question — Dickie Arbiter

Certainly the most obvious ... example of the strictly infantile essence of America's all-conquering mentality greets our eyes daily, anywhere and everywhere, in the guise of the tabloid newspaper. The tabloid newspaper actually means to the typical American of the era what the Bible is popularly supposed to have meant to the typical Pilgrim Father: viz. a very present help in times of trouble, plus a means of keeping out of trouble via harmless, since vicarious, indulgence in the pomps and vanities of this wicked world. — E. E. Cummings

Mere tabloid journalists, obliged to choose between the word of a Tory MP and that of a common prostitue, have been far too stupid to see that you can put your mortgage on the latter being true. — William Donaldson

Tabloid photos capture people at their most self-conscious and disoriented; in real life, Paris Hilton is like an elegant paper crane. — Diablo Cody

Although it's not something I'm particularly proud of, I'm willing to admit that, in addition to whiling away the long stretches of time in the air and waiting in airport lounges reading the 'New Yorker' and 'New York Times' on my Kindle, I've picked up the occasional tabloid magazine. — Derek Blasberg

Everyone with an iPhone is a journalist in their own way now, especially because we live in a tabloid culture. — Megan Fox

You are being hit with tabloid-journalism bi-lines of what you are doing because you have suddenly become a star. — Miranda Otto

My whole goal was to be able to work in television and film and maintain a normal life, never be in a tabloid. — Pauley Perrette

Tabloid stuff just offends. — William Shatner

We change our attitudes, our careers, our relationships. Even our age changes minute by minute. We change our politics, our moods, and our sexual preferences. We change our outlook, we change our minds, we change our sympathies. Yet when someone changes hir gender, we put hir on some television talk show. Well, here's what I think: I think we all of us do change our genders. All the time. Maybe it's not as dramatic as some tabloid headline screaming "She Was A He!" But we do, each of us, change our genders. In response to each interaction we have with a new or different person, we subtly shift the kind of man or woman, boy or girl, or whatever gender we're being at the moment. We're usually not the same kind of man or woman with our lover as we are with our boss or a parent. When we're introduced for the first time to someone we find attractive, we shift into being a different kind of man or woman than we are with our childhood friends. We all change our genders. — Kate Bornstein

You may have seen have seen me in such places as your local market in a tabloid. — Tony Romo

What stars do in their off-hours is a never-ending source of diddling curiosity to the tabloid sensibility. — James Wolcott

Because when you go out, and you have fun, basically you're performing for these tabloid outlets and the paparazzi. And when you perform and create this story, they're chuffed - they get excited, they capture it, and they put it out. — Adrian Grenier

A paparazzi is merely an extremely nosy nobody with a camera - and bills to pay. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

On this subject, U.S. Air Force spokesman James W. Moseley argued, "Those tabloid papers and cult magazines have been raving about this stuff for years, and it's just not true! — Gene Steinberg

I think the things that are more painful to me are not the intrusion of paparazzi, it's the lack of civility that I find more intimidating and far more painful an experience. It's the lack of critical thinking. It's the endless snarky, mean way we talk about each other, we approach each other. The anonymity of being cruel, the delight in tearing people down. The tabloid era that we find ourselves in is a cultural boneyard, and that is painful to me. — Sarah Jessica Parker

In the U.K., journalists are a little bit more ruthless than in Denmark. I have a feeling the tabloid press in the U.K. is pretty harsh. — Birgitte Hjort Sorensen

First of all, tabloid stories are some of the richest and most important stories that we have. There's nothing wrong, per se, with tabloid stories. — Errol Morris

The tabloid that said that I dressed up as a medieval, like a sexy medieval something and that upset me more than the dating rumors that have been circling around that were fake. If somebody thinks I'm going to dress sexy to a costume party, they have another thing coming. — Jennifer Lawrence

Elizabeth studied the blurry tabloid photo, which showed her cousin Mary Stuart leaving a Paris disco at dawn, drunkenly clinging to the arm of a French tennis pro. The message was very clear. Put passion first and you end up neither loved nor respected. — Barbara Taylor Bradford

Let's face the reality that if OJ Simpson had been poor or even lower-middle-class there would have been no media attention. Justice was never a central issue. Our nation's tabloid passion to know about the lives of the rich made class a starting point. — Bell Hooks

I think people today are very cynical. They need to bring other people down. Reality television and tabloid magazines-never before did we need to see movie stars taking out their garbage. But all of a sudden, it's front-page news-trying to figure out who's dating whom, all that stuff. Who cares? — Scarlett Johansson

So Aphrodite married Hephaestus and the celebrity ship Aphrophaestus completely dominated Olympian tabloid news for like a thousand years. Did they live happily ever after? HAHAHAHAHA. No. — Rick Riordan

I hate that tabloid idea of anybody who is famous having to forfeit their privacy. — Caitlin Moran

I think there is some truth to publicity stunts that might get you press like that. It's so hilarious because now every time I walk by the tabloid stands and look at the tabloids it makes me kind of wonder like what's really going on. — Simon Rex

I like the idea of dating, but I'm not dating anyone exclusively, particularly right now. It's hard to be in a relationship unless you're ready to go public with it. So it's a lot easier for me to not be in a relationship. I really don't want that part of my life to be tabloid fodder. — Cory Monteith

The friends of tabloid newspapers often point out that their journalism exists only because millions of people pay money to read it. — Nick Davies

It's that invasive and puerile curiosity to feed a tabloid culture. I don't subscribe to it. — John Byrne

In Britain we have a very powerful tabloid culture with celebrities on the front page crying with their make-up smeared and tears, and it's kind of what you'd expect from someone who likes to dress up that way. — Eddie Izzard

Loser"
"Father directed choir. When it paused on a Sunday,
he liked to loiter out morning with the girls;
then back to our cottage, dinner cold on the table,
Mother locked in bed devouring tabloid.
You should see him, white fringe about his ears,
bald head more biased than a billiard ball
he never left a party. Mother left by herself
I threw myself from her car and broke my leg ...
Years later, he said, 'How jolly of you to have jumped.'
He forgot me, mother replaced his name, I miss him.
When I am unhappy, I try to squeeze the hour
an hour or half-hour smaller than it is;
orphaned, I wake at midnight and pray for day
the lovely ladies get me through the day — Robert Lowell

It was at the beginning of all this tabloid frenzy. Our garbage was being gone through, and we were involved in all these chases getting home, and people camping out on our property to get pictures. — Lauren Holly

I don't really mind playing tabloid monster. I always liked those characters in the old movies. — Nick Denton

And yet I wasn't sure what his weakness was. We all do that as we get to know someone. Like a tabloid editor, we search for both greatness and weakness, jotting down notes in our heads for future exploitation. We are never comfortable with those who have no visible flaw. — Wayne Elise

Well, honestly, both my husband and I tend to ignore the tabloids. We see them every once in awhile or it comes to our attention that we are in a tabloid for one reason or another. But it's always false. — Connie Chung

Yeah, Wacko Jacko, where did that come from? Some English tabloid. I have a heart and I have feelings. I feel that when you do that to me. It's not nice. — Michael Jackson

You're the tattooed, chain-smoking, beer-guzzling, train wreck, son of the movie star who's marrying my family-values, ex Marine Senator father. You're a tabloid headline, standing right here in front of me!

Yeah? Well, you're the goody-goody, stuck up, boring-ass virgin who's so uptight she can't find anyone to punch her v-card except the manwhore from her school who will screw literally anyone. And then turns out to be the most boring fucking lay I've ever had. — Sabrina Paige

There's a lot of people who feel there's a tabloid journalist who had it coming. — Ralph Fiennes

If a stranger is writing something completely fictitious, or insulting me on a blog or a tabloid, I don't take it personally. — Dasha Zhukova

The mass communications that could enable our politics for good have instead turned it into a bland conglomeration of stinted opinion cloaked in the occasional media frenzy of blame or denial. — Sara Sheridan

The world when I was 13 wasn't truly driven by tabloid magazines and social media and reality shows. I was able to have a little more of a private life. — LeAnn Rimes

Even in the grimmest of enterprises there are tension breakers. At one point, the tabloid National Enquirer ran a story headlined "Bush and Saddam Are Cousins" and offered genealogical "proof" that not only was George Bush related to the queen of England, but "Hussein and President Bush share a common ancestry dating back at least to the crusades." This news prompted the President to circulate a memo to the national security team that said, "No decisions I make will be affected by my relationship with Saddam Hussein. The Queen and I would have it no other way. — Colin Powell

A close associate of his gave an interview in which the book was described as quotes 'fiction from being to end'. I suffered trial by tabloid for a couple of weeks, lots of insults in the press, in the columns - this man should be put in the tower and so on. — Anthony Holden

You will never have enough space in a tabloid paper to compete with the 'New York Times' on foreign coverage. — Pete Hamill

My life isn't tabloid-friendly. — Mika.

I don't think anyone likes to see a picture of themselves in a tabloid, besides a couple people who I'm not going to mention. I'm definitely not one of those people. — Gisele Bundchen

A lot of stories that have fascinated me are tabloid stories that have come from other newspapers, like 'The New York Times.' — Errol Morris

Being in the public eye, I have certainly gone through the tabloid situation where they come out with stories that are not true. I don't read or pay attention to it. — Cheryl Tiegs

an Underground train roared and rattled, driving a ghost-wind along the platform, which scattered a copy of the tabloid Sun into its component pages, four-colour breasts and black and white invective scurrying — Neil Gaiman

I'm not sure when or why the tabloid angle on me was decided that I am a cad. I would have much rather it had been that I am secretly a dentist or that I love soup. — Zach Braff

America wants solutions. America wants a leader. No more tabloid politics. — Alveda King

We've all seen the media endlessly focus on the personal lives of celebrities. Most of it is gossip and tabloid fodder. — Alana Stewart

I really liked it. It was awesome - my first tabloid story. If you're going to have a tabloid story written about you, it might as well be with Johnny Depp. — Christina Ricci

It was like everyone suddenly knew what mattered. Money didn't matter. Politics didn't matter. Tabloid news didn't matter. No-compassion mattered. Calm mattered. Respect mattered. Did it really take something of this magnitude to make us realize this? — David Levithan

Tip to all British tabloids: Do Not Hack Amy Winehouse's Phone. I repeat: Do Not Hack Amy Winehouse's Phone. — Jonah Goldberg

Trying to overcome addiction is one of the hardest things for a person to do. And the fact that I had to do it under the scrutiny of tabloid press at first made it seem even more difficult. But in fact, it oddly ended up being a plus. Because of the tabloid stuff, it wasn't like I could walk into a bar and order a drink. — Matthew Perry

There are ways of avoiding becoming tabloid fodder and therefore giving people license to pry into your private life. And there's a distinction between being an actor and being a celebrity. You may become a celebrity through acting, but you don't need to do so. — Damian Lewis

The National Enquirer is complete garbage, it is total lies, it was planted by Donald Trump's henchmen, and I don't think the people of Wisconsin or the people of America have any interest in tabloid trash. — Ted Cruz