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
What this quote means
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.
Themes
PressMediaPublic DiscourseFailureTalk-ShowSensationalism
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech critiquing modern media, one might reference this quote to emphasize the decline of serious journalism.
More from Carl Bernstein
All quotes →The most important ethical issues and the most difficult ones are the human ones because a reporter has enormous power to hurt people.
Carl BernsteinRead
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!
Carl BernsteinRead
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.
Carl BernsteinRead
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.
Carl BernsteinRead
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.
Carl BernsteinRead
Similar quotes
It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.
W. E. B. Du BoisRead
I worship God as Truth only. I have not yet found Him, but I am seeking after Him. I am prepared to sacrifice the things dearest to me in pursuit of this quest. Even if the sacrifice demanded my very life, I hope I may be prepared to give it.
Mahatma GandhiRead
It's an odd thing, but anyone who disappears is said to be seen in San Francisco. It must be a delightful city and possess all the attractions of the next world
Oscar WildeRead
Our great modern Republic. May those who seek the blessings of its institutions and the protection of its flag remember the obligations they impose.
Ulysses S. GrantRead
On the spiritual theory, man consists essentially of a spiritual nature or mind intimately associated with a spiritual body or soul, both of which are developed in and by means of a material organism
Alfred Russel WallaceRead
The minute you or anybody else knows what you are you are not it, you are what you or anybody else knows you are and as everything in living is made up of finding out what you are it is extraordinarily difficult really not to know what you are and yet to be that thing.
Gertrude SteinRead