Words matter. These are the best Bill Keller Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
I think there’s a misconception that I’m opposed to social media.
Since September 11 2001, editors in America have faced some excruciating choices, as the attempt to wage a war against a new kind of enemy sometimes strained the boundaries of our laws and values.
Buying an aggregator and calling it a content play is a little like a company’s announcing plans to improve its cash position by hiring a counterfeiter.
There’s a lot of stuff they don’t teach you in the mythical editors’ school. They don’t teach you that you’re going to have to spend a lot of your life in crisis management.
People crave trustworthy information about the world we live in. Some people want it because it is essential to the way they make a living. Some want it because they regard being well-informed as a condition of good citizenship. Some want it because they want something to exchange over dinner tables and water coolers.
I don’t think fairness means that you give equal time to every point of view no matter how marginal. You weigh the sides, you do some truth-testing, you apply judgment to them.
I make a joke that I’m the Internet curmudgeon, but ‘wary’ is a good way to put it.
Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, has on several occasions talked about transparency as an absolute principle. I don’t personally believe that.
For all of the woes besetting our business, I believe with all my heart that newspapers – whether they are distributed to your doorstep, your laptop, your iPhone or a chip implanted in your cerebral cortex – will be around for a long time.
Every time my TweetDeck shoots a new tweet to my desktop, I experience a little dopamine spritz that takes me away from… from… wait, what was I saying?
I don’t have dating tips.
I do care if religious doctrine becomes an excuse to exclude my fellow citizens from the rights and protections our country promises.
In fact, I spent 25 years as a reporter, swearing I would never become an editor. Sitting at a desk, watching other people go out and find the story, and then fussing with other people’s words – I just didn’t get the appeal of that.
I’m a Capricorn, actually.
One of the most important disciplines in journalism is to challenge your working premises.
I have nothing against conservative people putting out conservative commentary or doing conservative broadcasting, or liberal people doing liberal broadcasting, or conservative blogs or liberal blogs.
Twitter and Facebook are brilliant tools, the journalistic uses of which are still being plumbed. They are great for disseminating interesting material. They are useful for gathering information, including from places that are inaccessible.
Everything is accessible to everyone all the time, and I think there are wondrous things to treasure with what the Internet has made available to journalists. But I think it’s also had some effects that are less pleasant. It has chipped away at a sense of privacy and secrecy.
Beating up on the so-called elite media has a nice populist ring to it.
The most obvious drawback of social media is that they are aggressive distractions.
I don’t think anyone at Fox believes they are producing even-handed, impartial coverage.
Choosing my favorite moment in journalism would be like picking a favorite among my children. I can’t pick one favorite.
I don’t think that there is absolute freedom of the press. We operate under laws – against libel, for instance. The idea that there is some absolute press freedom is kind of a myth.
Whether or not Twitter makes you stupid, it certainly makes some smart people sound stupid.
There’s no question that sources sometimes have interests aside from the truth when they talk to reporters. That’s why reporters have to very aggressively report against their own theses and against their initial information.