First Law[s], Sometimes Eat[en]

[Posted by reader_iam]

Snacks for thought:

Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters' gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all.
--Thomas Carlyle, Heroes and Hero-Worship

Newspapers are unable, seemingly, to discriminate between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilisation.
--George Bernard Shaw, 1931

Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism what will be grasped at once.
--Cyril Connolly

You can crush a man with journalism.
--William Randolph Hearst

If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.
--Malcolm X

Journalism constructs momentarily arrested equilibriums and gives disorder an implied order. That is already two steps from reality.
--Thomas Griffith

Junk journalism is the evidence of a society that has got at least one thing right, that there should be nobody with the power to dictate where responsible journalism begins.
--Tom Stoppard

A newspaper consists of just the same number of words, whether there be any news in it or not.
--Henry Fielding

And, finally:

The bigger the information media, the less courage and freedom they allow. Bigness means weakness.
--Eric Sevareid, "The Press and the People," television program, 1959

Let that last one sink in, will you--and notice how it differs from all the others.