Anderson's muckraking is one of debatable ends constantly used to justify questionable works.
– Thomas Griffith
As the final step, pollsters tell us how the public reacted to it, which becomes the agreed version-whether the event itself was a flop or a success.
– Thomas Griffith
Editors may think of themselves as dignified headwaiters in a well-run restaurant but more often they operate a snack bar and expect you to be grateful that at least they got the food to the table warm.
– Thomas Griffith
Its attitude, which it has preached and practiced, is skepticism. Now, it finds, the public is applying that skepticism to the press.
– Thomas Griffith
Journalism as theater is what TV news is.
– Thomas Griffith
Journalism constructs momentarily arrested equilibriums and gives disorder an implied order. That is already two steps from reality.
– Thomas Griffith
Journalism is in fact history on the run.
– Thomas Griffith
Just to be seen strolling to or from a helicopter on the White House lawn, shouting an evasive answer to Sam Donaldson, must seem to the Reagans not quite satisfactory enough of a 7 PM presence, and this inane scene certainly galls the press.
– Thomas Griffith
The news is staged, anticipated, reported, analyzed until all interest is wrung from it and abandoned for some new novelty.
– Thomas Griffith
To the public, the press is not David among Goliaths; it has become one of the Goliaths, Big Media, a combination of powerful television networks, large magazine groups and newspaper chains that are near-monopolies.