For the first time, the weird and the stupid and the coarse are becoming our cultural norms, even our cultural ideal.
You can’t serve the public good without the truth as a bottom line.
Good journalism should challenge people, not just mindlessly amuse them.
Religion is one of the fundaments of Hillary Clinton’s character and politics.
I think all good reporting is the same thing – the best attainable version of the truth.
Public policy in the twentieth century was about protecting and expanding the social compact, based on recognition that effective government at the federal level provides rules and services and safety measures that contribute to a better society.
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.
There’s something totally crazy about this.
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 reality is that the media are probably the most powerful of all our institutions today and they, or rather we, too often are squandering our power and ignoring our obligations. The consequence of our abdication of responsibility is the ugly spectacle of idiot culture!
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 Congress is a dysfunctional institution; its broken. One of our three branches of government is broken.
There had always been black people in and out of our house, and from the outset I had been taught that for them life was defined by struggle and filled with injustice.
The American Revolution and Declaration of Independence, it has often been argued, were fueled by the most radical of all American political ideas.
Radical thought has inspired many of the great political and social reform movements in American history, from ending slavery to establishing the minimum wage.
John Paul was the first modern pope to grow up in a secular culture: He attended public schools, danced with girls – indeed, as a teenager he had a crush on a beautiful Jewish girl who fled his hometown just ahead of the arrival of the Germans.
In the John Paul II days, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger had the advantage of staying in his cupboard – the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith – exchanging views only with the Pope, and speaking publicly only through carefully written missives on doctrinal issues.
Today, ordinary Americans are being stuffed with garbage.
All institutions have lapses, even great ones, especially by individual rogue employees – famously in recent years at ‘The Washington Post,’ ‘The New York Times,’ and the three original TV networks.
Even at the end of a presidential election campaign, we have no way to know what Mitt Romney really believes.