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Journalism Almanac

The Freedom Forum has produced calendars packed with germane quotations about journalism. Here are a few extracts that particularly appealed:



"In our society, under the great dispensation of the First Amendment and the way the courts have interpreted it, the press plays a unique role. It knits together the voluntary interests, it spreads the news of government, it is the beginning of choice." -- Richard C. Wald, journalism professor, Columbia University, 2003.

"Public debate must not only be unfettered; it must also be informed." -- Lewis Powell, U.S. Supreme Court justice, 1978.

"Harrowing photographs do not inevitably lose their power to shock. But they are not much help if the task is to understand." -- Susan Sontag, author, 2003.

"The best newsrooms are places where people live in fear of being wrong. Good journalists can't stand errors." -- Caesar Andrews, editor, Gannett News Service, 2003.

"If you disagree with something I write, tell me so, argue with me, correct me -- but don't tell me to shut up. That's not the American way." -- Roger Ebert, film critic, 2003.

"The one function that 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, network news anchor, 1921-2003.

Censorship and secrecy are a surrender to fear and weakness by our leaders, a failure of faith in First Amendment principles and in the good sense of the American people." -- Paul K. McMasters, First Amendment Center, 2003.

"The flag has been hijecked and turned into a logo -- the trademark of a monopoly on patriotism." Bill Moyers, host, PBS's "Now With Bill Moyers," 2003.

"Nothing could be more alarming or dismaying to me ... than to encounter, repeatedly, the suggestion that the reader knows from the news columns what the views of the newspaper are." -- J. Russell Wiggins, newspaper editor, c. 1965.

"The right to read without fear of government surveillance is a cornerstone of our democracy. Freedom of the press means nothing without a correlative freedom to read." -- Bernard Sanders, U.S. representative, I-Vt., 2003.

"People who protest the war against Iraq had as much right to rally 'round the flag as the hyperpatriots cheering on the war. Nor does the fact that the nation is at war impose on citizens a moral obligation to shut up and support the government." Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., historialn, 2003.

The besetting sin of big-time journalism is arrogance -- the belief in our own omniscience, that we know so much we don't have to listen to criticism." -- David Broder, columnist, The Washington Post, 2003.

"By failing to protect the public interest in free access to the products of inventive and artistic genius -- indeed, by virtually ignoring the central purpose of the Copyright/Patent Clause -- the Court has quitclaimed to Congress its principal responsibility in this area of the law." -- John Paul Stevens, U.S. Supreme Court justice, 2003.

"The secret of Happiness is Freedom, and the secret of Freedom is Courage." -- Thucydides, Greek philosopher, historian, C. 400 A.D.

"The fundamental precept of liberty is toleration." -- Calvin Coolidge, 30th U.S. president, 1925.

"Truth is so great a thing that we ought not to despise any medium that will conduct us to it." -- Montaigne, French essayist, 1575.

"Another type of media magpie commonly seen on the (television) screen is the moldy scrapings from the bottoms of the think tanks, those soi-disant experts whose real expertise is patriotic buncombe, self-promotion and redd, white and blue humbug." -- Nicholas von Hoffman, syndicated columnist, 2003.

"The newspaper is ... the bible of democracy, the book out of which a people determines its conduct ... the only book most people read ... the only book they read every day." -- Walter Lippmann, journalist, c. 1920.

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