I don't think there will ever be a permanent truce, but I believe the media needs to be more careful and be willing to count to 10 before rushing on the air or into print.
Bob WoodwardRead
I think people are smart enough to sort it out. They know when they're watching one of these food fight shows where journalists sit around and yell and scream at each other, versus serious issue reporting.
Interpretation
People can discern the quality of journalism and understand the difference between sensationalism and serious reporting.
Bob Woodward emphasizes that audiences are capable of recognizing the difference between superficial, sensationalized media content, often characterized by loud arguments and drama, and genuine, serious journalism that deals with important issues. He suggests that viewers are knowledgeable enough to make informed judgments about the media they consume.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about the state of journalism at a media conference.
I don't think there will ever be a permanent truce, but I believe the media needs to be more careful and be willing to count to 10 before rushing on the air or into print.
There's hostility to lying, and there should be.
Newspapers that are truly independent, like The Washington Post, can still aggressively investigate anyone or anything with no holds barred.
The legislator learns that when you talk a lot, you get in trouble. You have to listen a lot to make deals.
The central dilemma in journalism is that you don't know what you don't know.
I'm not going to name some of my colleagues who are very well-known for their television presentation, but they wouldn't know new information or how to report a story if it came up and bit them.
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.
Americans born since World War II have grown up in a media-saturated environment. From childhood, we have developed a sort of advertising literacy, which combines appreciation for technique with skepticism about motives. We respond to ads with at least as much rhetorical intelligence as we apply to any other form of persuasion.
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.
Media outlets that are exploiting Ebola because they want a sensational story and politicians using it to their own ends ought to be ashamed.
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.
The media is too concentrated, too few people own too much. There's really five companies that control 90 percent of what we read, see and hear. It's not healthy.
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