There's never any time I think I'm a real journalist, because I don't have any of the qualifications or the intentions for that.
John OliverRead
The British media is sinking down, as the American news media has lowered the bar for all of humanity. British news media is definitely trying to stoop down to that level. Everyone is stooping to the lowest common denominator.
Interpretation
The quote critiques the decline in journalistic standards across media platforms.
In this quote, John Oliver expresses concern over the declining standards in journalism, particularly highlighting how the American news media has set a low benchmark that British media feels compelled to follow. He emphasizes a broader trend where media organizations prioritize sensationalism and shallow reporting, ultimately degrading the quality of information available to the audience.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about the quality of news coverage in modern journalism.
There's never any time I think I'm a real journalist, because I don't have any of the qualifications or the intentions for that.
Australia turns out to be a sensational place, albeit one of the most comfortably racist places I've ever been in. They've really settled into their intolerance like an old resentful slipper.
I watch one news channel until my soul can't take it anymore. It's the background of my life.
My first 'Daily Show' piece was pretending I had this terrible immigrant journey, so I went to talk to an immigration lawyer who would help out people, and I ran into him in Penn Station about three months after I'd gotten the green card. I said, 'I got my green card yesterday.' And he hugged me because he understood that level of relief.
Southern people are bigger-hearted and kinder than I had any right to expect.
When you've married someone who's been at war, there is nothing you can do that compares to that level of selflessness and bravery.
I am a news presenter, a news broadcaster, an anchorman, a managing editor - not a commentator or analyst.
I can swear on a stack of Bibles that not once in doing the 'CBS Evening News' for 19 years - well, I take it back. Once perhaps. But during 19 years, with perhaps one exception, was I ever aware of any political or commercial pressure on that broadcast whatsoever.
The reality is that the media are probably the most powerful of all our institutions today and they, or rather we [journalists], too often are squandering our power and ignoring our obligations. The consequence of our abdication of responsibility is the ugly spectacle of idiot culture!
Television is simultaneously blamed, often by the same people, for worsening the world and for being powerless to change it.
I think we're living, in terms of media, in a very democratic age, but I think that we still look at everything through the lens of 'Vogue' and through our own point of view.
When I stepped down from the evening news at the age of 65, in '81, things were still going well. Immediately after that, the whole tenor of the CBS News Department changed.
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