98% of the people who get the magazine say they read the cartoons first - and the other 2% are lying.
David RemnickRead
Journalism, some huge percentage of it, should be devoted to putting pressure on power, on nonsense, on chicanery of all kinds and if that's going to invite a lawsuit, well, bring it on.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Journalism should challenge those in power and expose wrongdoing, even if it leads to legal consequences.
This quote emphasizes the role of journalism as a watchdog that holds those in power accountable for their actions. It suggests that a significant portion of journalism should focus on exposing dishonesty and corruption, advocating for the truth, and that potential legal ramifications should not deter journalistic integrity and responsibility.
Themes
JournalismAccountabilityPowerTruthExposure
In practice
Example use cases
In a seminar on ethics, this quote can highlight the importance of journalistic integrity.
More from David Remnick
All quotes βThe world is a crazy, beautiful, ugly complicated place, and it keeps moving on from crisis to strangeness to beauty to weirdness to tragedy. The caravan keeps moving on, and the job of the longform writer or filmmaker or radio broadcaster is to stop - is to pause - and when the caravan goes away, that's when this stuff comes.
David RemnickRead
Everybody has a cartoon of themselves. Mine is: I write very fast, and I'm ruthlessly efficient with my time.
David RemnickRead
Every good journalist is aware that his trade may one day go the way of phrenology-and, what's more, the population will hardly protest the extinction.
David RemnickRead
Similar 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
I suppose, in the end, we journalists try - or should try - to be the first impartial witnesses of history. If we have any reason for our existence, the least must be our ability to report history as it happens so that no one can say: 'we didn't know - no one told us.'
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I kept thinking, I'm not going to do political journalism, because there's no way to keep my principles and be a political journalist, so I'll edit a popular science magazine. This will be my salvation, and I'll emerge with my integrity intact. That didn't even happen.
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Newspapers that are truly independent, like The Washington Post, can still aggressively investigate anyone or anything with no holds barred.
Bob WoodwardRead
My function is, as objectively and accurately as I can, to present reality to people out there, and doing that as quickly as we do is quite difficult enough, thank you.
Ted KoppelRead
I don't think that my kind of journalism has ever been universally popular. It's lonely out here.
Hunter S. ThompsonRead