The Universal Journalist Homepage
The Press
Freedom of the Press
Freedom of the Press in Britain is freedom to print such of
the proprietor's prejudices as the advertisers don't object to
Hannen Swaffer
A free press is one that prints a dictator's speech but doesn't
have to.
Laurence J. Peter
Freedom of the Press is guaranteed to those who own one.
AJ Liebling
One of the unsung freedoms that go with a free press is the
freedom not to read it.
Ferdinand Mount
I'm with you on the free press. It's the newspapers I can't
stand.
Tom Stoppard
"Night and Day'
1978
The role of the press
The first duty of the press is to obtain the earliest and most correct intelligence of events of the time and instantly, by disclosing them, to make them the common property of the nation.
Editor of 'The Times'
1852
By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps
us in touch with the ignorance of the community.
Oscar Wilde
The Press is the hired agent of the monied system, and set
up for no other purpose than to tell lies where their interests
are involved. One can trust nobody and nothing.
Henry Adams
1918
A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant
and the crazy crazier.
H.L. Mencken
A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.
Arthur Miller
1961
The idea that media is there to educate us, or to inform us,
is ridiculous because that's about tenth or eleventh on their
list.
Abbie Hoffman
US political activist
1987
The power of the press
Newspapers make the multitude too familiar with the actions
and counsels of their superiors.
Roger L'Estrange
Supervisor of newspapers
to King Charles II
c1678
A journalist is a grumbler, a censurer, a giver of advice,
a regent of sovereigns, a tutor of nations. Four hostile newspapers
are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.
Napoleon
You can crush a man with journalism.
William Randolph Hearst
A newspaper owner whose career
seemed largely to consist of
efforts to prove this axiom.
The press? What you can't square, you squash; what you can't
squash, you square
Lloyd George
[Rothermere's 'Daily Mail' and Beaverbrook's 'Daily Express']are
not newspapers in the ordinary acceptance of the term. They are
engines of the propaganda for the constasntly changing policies,
desires, personal wishes, personal likes and dislikes of two men.
What are their methods? Their methods are direct falsehood, misrepresentation,
half-truths, the alteration of the spoeaker's meaning by putting
sentences apart from the context, supression, and editorial criticsim
of spoeeches which are not reported in the paperWhat the propreitorship
of these papers is aiming at is power, but power without responsibility
the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.
Stanley Baldwin
British Prime Minister, speaking at a by-election
meeting. Despite the presence of the editor
of the 'Daily Express' at the meeting, the
paper failed to report the speech.
1931
Never argue with people who buy ink by the gallon.
Tommy Losorda
No intelligence system, no bureaucracy, can offer the information
provided by competitive reporting; the cleverest secret agents
of the police state are inferior to the plodding reporter of the
democracy.
Harold Evans