A Quote by Carl Bernstein

Good journalism should challenge people, not just mindlessly amuse them. — © Carl Bernstein
Good journalism should challenge people, not just mindlessly amuse them.
Religion has become to many merely a means of doing a little charity work, just to amuse them after a hard day's labour - they get five minutes religion to amuse them. This is the danger with the liberal thought.
Any good broadcast, not just an Olympic broadcast, should have texture to it. It should have information, should have some history, should have something that's offbeat, quirky, humorous, and where called for it, should have journalism, and judiciously it should also have commentary. That's my ideal.
We cherish our friends not for their ability to amuse us, but for ours to amuse them...
We cherish our friends not for their ability to amuse us, but for ours to amuse them.
On the whole, lying is a cheerful affair. Embellishments are intended to give pleasure. People long to tell you what they imagine you want to hear. They want to amuse you; they want to amuse themselves; they want to show you a good time. This is beyond hospitality. This is art.
It is strange that there should be so little reading in the world, and so much writing. People in general do not willingly read, if they can have any thing else to amuse them.
The challenge in fiction is to write a terrific story. The challenge in journalism is to communicate solid, objective information. The challenge in creative non-fiction is to do it both and to do it well.
It's easy to assume people are conforming when we witness them all choosing the same option, but when we choose that very option ourselves, we have no shortage of perfectly good reasons for why we just happen to be doing the same thing as those other people; they mindlessly conform, but we mindfully choose. This doesn't mean that we're all conformists in denial. It means that we regularly fail to recognize that others' thoughts and behaviors are just as complex and varied as our own. Rather than being alone in a crowd of sheep, we're all individuals in sheep's clothing.
Whenever journalism students ask me what they should be doing, I say that if you're on social media, you should be following a ton of people that you don't necessarily agree with just to get their perspectives.
When I stand up in front of groups of people who agree with me, I know I have to really step my game up because I can't just sort of meet them where they're at; I have to take them somewhere else. They want you to challenge them and have good ideas.
The teacher will perform miracles. Not just to delight and amuse people, but showing them that miraculous occurrences indicate that there is something more.
Journalism schools are good to get a job, but I don't know what else they are good for. I don't like the word "journalism" to begin with. It's news reporting, and that consists of using your two feet. The only lesson, then, that you could give people is how to climb stairs, because there are no stories on the first floor.
I don't think crowdfunding is a good idea for journalism in general. Good work should be supported by news organizations, and publishers should pony up money to support investigative reporting. But we're in hard times, so there are upsides and downsides to it.
I got in journalism for any number of reasons, not least because it's so much fun. Journalism should be in the business of putting pressure on power, finding out the truth, of shining a light on injustice, of, when appropriate, being amusing and entertaining - it's a complicated and varied beast, journalism.
One should feel that one's friends, the people who meditate around you, who seek, are likewise pligrims on a journey. They're traveling to eternity also. You should love them. Whenever you see a good quality in them, you should repect them.
A big part of my book deals with the caliber of journalism. Our journalism in general is deplorable, and on elections in particular it's very ineffectual. There are a lot of problems, a lot of them having to do with to problems within the professional code of journalism, which defines its role as the regurgitation of what people in power say. Another big problem is that we allow people with money to basically buy what's talked about in campaigns through running TV ads.
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