"I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts."
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Will Rogers, straight man (1879-1935)
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"We've uncovered some embarrassing ancestors in the not-too-distant past. Some horse thieves, and some people killed on Saturday nights. One of my relatives, unfortunately, was even in the newspaper business."
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Former US President Jimmy Carter
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“I thank God we have no free schools or printing, and I hope that we shall not have these for a hundred years. For learning has brought disobediences and heresy and sects into the world; and printing has divulged them and libels against the government. God keep us from both.”
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Sir William Berkeley, Governor, Virginia Colony, 1671
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“On the whole, I would not say that our Press is obscene. I would say that it trembles on the brink of obscenity.”
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Lord Longford, British politician
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“I read a great number of press reports and find comfort in the fact that they are nearly always conflicting.”
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Harold MacMillan, British Prime Minister
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“I won’t say that the papers misquote me, but I sometimes wonder where Christianity would be today if some of those reporters had been Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.”
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Barry M. Goldwater, U.S. Senator
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“I read the newspaper avidly. It is my one form of continuous fiction.”
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Aneurin Bevan, British politician
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“Why are newspaper reporters so frequently crude, illiterate and lazy? Pride of craftsmanship seems to be dying out fast among these people who once…essayed to style themselves as a profession. How can that be a profession which connotes neither training, scholarship, real intelligence or independence.”
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Sir Robert Gordon Menzies (c 1935) quoted in The Age, July 14, 1982
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“Years ago, a South Australian Premier, Sir Thomas Playford, told me : ’You never get into trouble for what you don’t say.' There’s a good deal of truth in that, though in my experience what you don’t say is frequently reported.”
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Sir Robert Gordon Menzies, quoted in The Wit of Sir Robert Menzies (1966)
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"I've been trying to tame our press corps ever since I got into politics, and I've failed miserably. They get to express their opinions--sometimes in the form of news."
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President George W. Bush, 2001
Stoppard
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"The president of the United States will not stand and be questioned
like a chicken thief by men whose names he does not even know."
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-US President Herbert Hoover
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"I have great respect for the media. I mean, our society is a good,
solid democracy because of a good, solid media. But I also understand
that a lot of times there's opinions mixed in with news. And I'm more
interested in news. And the best way to get the news is from objective
sources. And the most objective sources I have are people on my staff
who tell me what's happening in the world.
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--President George W. Bush, interview on Fox News, 2003
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"To say that the newspaper press represents public opinion is to
administer insult to intelligent men. It is the property of
speculators, political leaders, large contractors and railway
directors."
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--Karl Marx (1818-1883)
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