The greatest felony in the news business today is to be behind, or to miss a big story. So speed and quantity substitute for thoroughness and quality, for accuracy and context.
Carl BernsteinRead
The failures of the press have contributed immensely to the emergence of a talk-show nation, in which public discourse is reduced to ranting and raving and posturing. We now have a mainstream press whose news agenda is increasingly influenced by this netherworld.
Interpretation
This quote critiques the media's influence on public discourse, highlighting a degradation in quality and depth.
Carl Bernstein's quote reflects on the failures of the press and how they have led to a culture dominated by superficial talk shows where serious discussions are overshadowed by sensationalism. He suggests that the mainstream media is increasingly shaped by this environment, thereby impacting the quality of information and public dialogue.
In practice
In a speech critiquing modern media, one might reference this quote to emphasize the decline of serious journalism.
The greatest felony in the news business today is to be behind, or to miss a big story. So speed and quantity substitute for thoroughness and quality, for accuracy and context.
The most important ethical issues and the most difficult ones are the human ones because a reporter has enormous power to hurt people.
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!
If you are a great news organization, you can't have the best obtainable version of the truth if your vision and your scale is reduced to a fraction of its former self.
The pressure to compete, the fear somebody else will make the splash first, creates a frenzied environment in which a blizzard of information is presented and serious questions may not be raised.
The lowest form of popular culture - lack of information, misinformation, disinformation, and a contempt for the truth or the reality of most people's lives - has overrun real journalism.
A society whose members are united by the fact that they think in the same way in regard to the sacred world and its relations with the profane world, and by the fact that they translate these common ideas into common practices, is what is called a Church. In all history, we do not find a single religion without a Church.
I'm not afraid to die - it's just that I had so much left to do in this world.
To grumble about the world and its unhappiness is always easier than to beat one's breast and groan over oneself.
And to say that society ought to be governed by the opinion of the wisest and best, though true, is useless. Whose opinion is to decide who are the wisest and best?
One of the peculiar sins of the twentieth century which we've developed to a very high level is the sin of credulity. It has been said that when human beings stop believing in God they believe in nothing. The truth is much worse: they believe in anything.
But I began then to think of time as having a shape, something you could see, like a series of liquid transparencies, one laid on top of another.
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