Between what matters and what seems to matter, how should the world we know judge wisely?
Flash'd from his bed the electric tidings came, he is no better, he is much the same.
I do not like to get the news, because there has never been an era when so many things were going so right for so many of the wrong persons.
In the case of news, we should always wait for the sacrament of confirmation.
It is always the unreadable that occurs.
Listening to a news broadcast is like smoking a cigarette and crushing the butt in the ashtray.
News is that which comes from the North, East, West and South, and if it comes from only one point on the compass, then it is a class ; publication and not news.
News is the first rough draft of history.
News is what a chap who doesn't care much about anything wants to read. And it's only news until he's read it. After that it's dead.
News reports stand up as people, and people wither into editorials. ClichTs walk around on two legs while men are having theirs shot off.
Newsmen believe that news is a tacitly acknowledged fourth branch of the federal system. This is why most news about government sounds as if it were federally mandated — serious, bulky and blandly worthwhile, like a high-fiber diet set in type.
No news is good news.
None loves the messenger who brings bad news.
The conflict between the men who make and the men who report the news is as old as time. News may be true, but it is not truth, and reporters and officials seldom see it the same way. In the old days, the reporters or couriers of bad news were often put to the gallows; now they are given the Pulitzer Prize, but the conflict goes on.
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 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 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.
To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit it and read it are old women over their tea.
Today's news was published by word of mouth in the streets of ancient Athens.