Sunday, May 31, 2009 – Considering the News
The one function TV news performs very well is that when there is no news we give it to you with the same emphasis as if there were. ~ David Brinkley
Problems are the price of progress. Don’t bring me anything but trouble. Good news weakens me. ~ Charles F. Kettering
Nothing travels faster than light, with the possible exception of bad news, which follows its own rules. ~ Douglas Adams
The only gossip I’m interested in is things from the Weekly World News – “Woman’s bra bursts, 11 injured” – that kind of thing. ~ Johnny Depp
If you don’t change your beliefs, your life will be like this forever. Is that good news? ~ William Somerset Maugham
News is what somebody somewhere wants to suppress; all the rest is advertising. ~ Lord Northcliffe
There is a huge difference between journalism and advertising. Journalism aspires to truth. Advertising is regulated for truth. I’ll put the accuracy of the average ad in this country up against the average news story any time. ~ Jef I. Richards
I would not know how I am supposed to feel about many stories if not for the fact that the TV news personalities make sad faces for sad stories and happy faces for happy stories. ~ Dave Barry
People everywhere confuse what they read in newspapers with news. ~ A. J. Liebling
But we are at war, and we here at THE DAILY SHOW will do our best to keep you informed of any late-breaking… humor we can find. Of course, our show is obviously at a disadvantage compared to the many news sources that we’re competing with… at a disadvantage in several respects. For one thing, we are fake. They are not. So in terms of credibility we are, well, oddly enough, actually about even. We’re about even. ~ Jon Stewart
Fake news executives are nicer than real news executives, though real news executives are funnier than fake news executives. They don’t know they’re being funny. ~ Stephen Colbert
To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea. ~ Henry David Thoreau
News is what a chap who doesn’t care much about anything wants to read. And it’s only news until he’s read it. After that it’s dead. ~ Evelyn Waugh
Listening to a news broadcast is like smoking a cigarette and crushing the butt in the ashtray. ~ Milan Kundera
Literature is news that stays news. ~ Ezra Pound
The bad news is that fifty people died in a hotel fire; the good news is that we got exclusive footage. ~ Jessica Savitch
Business news is sexy. ~ Maria Bartiromo
The news appeals to the same jaded appetite that makes a child tire of a toy as soon as it becomes familiar and demand a new one in its place. ~ Christopher Lasch
News reports don’t change the world. Only facts change it, and those have already happened when we get the news. ~ Friedrich Durrenmatt
I do not like to get the news, because there has never been an era when so many things were going so right for so many of the wrong persons. ~ Ogden Nash
If it’s far away, it’s news, but if it’s close at home, it’s sociology. ~ James Reston
When you’re watching the news, how many days in a row can you watch that and feel good about yourself and the world? ~ Sandra Bernhard
There is a certain comfort in waking up and finding that Michael Jackson is still the Big Story. At least it tells you that nothing horrible has happened in the world that would force them to move on to real news. ~ Pat Sajak
I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers. ~ Mohandas Gandhi
Journalism largely consists in saying “Lord Jones is dead” to people who never knew Lord Jones was alive. ~ G. K. Chesterton
We can’t quite decide if the world is growing worse, or if the reporters are just working harder. ~ The Houghton Line, November 1965
News is history shot on the wing. ~ Gene Fowler, Skyline
It was while making newspaper deliveries, trying to miss the bushes and hit the porch, that I first learned the importance of accuracy in journalism. ~ Charles Osgood
If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: “President Can’t Swim.” ~ Lyndon B. Johnson
Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock. ~ Ben Hecht
Journalism is the ability to meet the challenge of filling space. ~ Rebecca West
Newspapers are unable, seemingly, to discriminate between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilisation. ~ George Bernard Shaw, 1931
I am unable to understand how a man of honor could take a newspaper in his hands without a shudder of disgust. ~ Charles Baudelaire
In the real world, the right thing never happens in the right place and the right time. It is the job of journalists and historians to make it appear that it has. ~ Mark Twain
Just Above Sunset 