News, facts and opinions. Some considerations on the press, the media, journalists and communication in general, with various aphorisms on the subject.
What if culture itself was nothing more than a stop, a pause, a respite, in the pursuit of barbarism?
Slavoj Žižek
The closer to the truth, the better the lie, and the truth itself, when it can be used, is the best lie.
Isaac Asimov
Newspapers have approximately the same relationship with life that fortune tellers have with metaphysics.
Karl Kraus
Newspapers not only describe the stupidity of reality, but also contribute to fueling it.
Carl William Brown
You read newspapers the same way you love: with a blindfold on. There is no attempt to understand the facts. You listen to the sweet words of the editor in chief as you listen to the words of your lover.
Marcel Proust
It is dangerous to be right in matters where established men are wrong.
Voltaire
Better to make the news than to receive it; better to be an actor than a critic.
Winston Churchill
The further away a catastrophe or accident occurs, the higher the number of deaths and injuries must be for it to be newsworthy.
Arthur Bloch, Fuller’s Law of Journalism
Dispatch. Detailed account of all the massacres, violence and other repellent acts committed throughout the world, disseminated daily by news agencies for the edification and progress of humanity.
Ambrose Bierce
It is absolutely not true that the profession of a writer is a noble job, just look at certain journalists.
Carl William Brown
Newspaper editor. Person who combines the judicial functions of Minos, Rhadamanthus and Aeacus; one who can be appeased with a modest offering; virtuous and very strict censor but so charitable that he always manages to tolerate the virtues of others and his own personal vices; he hurls thunder and lightning and warnings around him until he looks more like a roll of firecrackers tied to a dog’s tail; and shortly after perhaps he sings a sweet and melodious ballad, like the lament of a donkey addressing his prayer to the evening star.
Ambrose Bierce
Foundation. All the news is devoid of it.
Gustave Flaubert
By printing a news story in big letters, people think it is indisputably true.
Jorge Luis Borges
It’s incredible how, every day, news always happens exactly enough to fill a newspaper.
Daniele Luttazzi
How is the world governed and how do wars start? Diplomats tell lies to journalists and then believe what they read.
Karl Kraus
Journalists, sycophants of the powerful, are nothing more than empty heads perpetually busy reporting stupidity and fomenting it.
Carl William Brown
What is the difference between literature and journalism? Oh! Journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.
Oscar Wilde
The managers, the sycophants, the lackeys, change places, parties, companies, newspapers, television, but they never change their minds, they always remain subservient to power.
Carl William Brown
Plague of the homeland is journalism that accepts news without examining it, even if it doesn’t invent it.
Cesare Cantù
Journalism is great. Is not a skilled newspaper editor the ruler of the world, being one of those who persuade him?
Thomas Carlyle
There are two jobs that can be done with little experience. One is prostitution, the other is journalism. Too often they become the same thing.
Howard Cosell
Journalists are impervious to everything. They arrive on the hot corpse, on the match, at the theater, on the earthquake village and they already have the piece incorporated. The world collapses beneath their feet, sinks in front of their notebooks and for them everything is interchangeable manure to be translated into a pre-packaged pulsation of bullshit on the keyboard. Cynical? No frigid people.
Carmelo Bene
There are some mediocre journalists who persist in saying that the internet is a medium in which sceptical, cynical and nihilistic characters rage, but perhaps these swaggerers don’t know that cynicism, skepticism and nihilism have been very respectable philosophical currents since ancient times that are also useful to oppose every form of power, including that of his sycophants.
Carl William Brown
Lord of the Mysteries and of the Law, hoisted on the high throne of Thought and suffused in his face by the splendors of the Transfiguration, legs crossed and a smile under his moustache, the Director pours his will on the newspaper and then cuts it into strips and pieces of the length desired. From time to time, from the depths of the altar, comes the voice of the Chief demanding twelve inches of humor and six lines of religious meditation, or commanding to eliminate wisdom and cook up a little pathos.
Ambrose Bierce
Something is always happening in the world, and these episodes accumulate over time, thus fueling the history of our planet. Telling what happens under the sun is one of the favorite activities of the media and journalists, but not only. The relationship that is established between facts and opinions is essential and should be well defined, but this does not always happen, also because the work of “chroniquers” is contaminated by those who are usually called “literati” in the broad sense.
However, facts should be distinguished from opinions unambiguously. Facts are objective events or situations that can be verified, while opinions are personal assessments or subjective interpretations of those events. So those who report what happens should strive to report the facts objectively, without distortion or prejudice. This means presenting all relevant perspectives fairly and accurately.
However, when opinions are presented, they should be clearly labeled as such. For example, columnist commentary should be distinguished from factual news reporting. While it is important to present diverse opinions, journalists should seek to balance these opinions with relevant context and factual information. This helps the audience better understand the full picture of the situation being reported.
Journalists should also be transparent about the sources of opinions and the potential interests of opinion bearers. This helps the audience to critically evaluate the opinions presented. In summary, the proper relationship between facts and opinions in journalism involves the objective presentation of facts, the clear distinction between facts and opinions, and the balancing of opinions with context and transparency regarding the sources of opinions.
“Mass hysteria is not a phenomenon that occurs only in humans, but can be observed in any gregarious species. A herd of elephants, at the sight of an airplane, was seized by a crazy collective terror. Every single elephant was terrified and its terror was communicated to the others, creating a vast multiplication of panic. However, since there were no journalists among them, the panic died down when the plane disappeared into the sky.”
This little story created by Bertrand Russell is nothing more than a nice metaphor of the great amplification power enjoyed by the press and more generally by the entire media world. After all, journalists, as our great philosopher claimed, are nothing more than the sycophants of power, in practice they are nothing more than the amplifiers of the bullies on duty.
Newspapers, the press, publishers and the media in general are however a fundamental means for studying the stupidity of the world and of those who tell it, most of the time trying to camouflage it under false and moralistic guises. This therefore is the real crux of the matter according to C.W. Brown and according to his teacher K. Kraus who was the first to understand and fight against this enormous and funny contemporary monster.
In fact, in a completely commodified world, it is not always easy to distinguish between various professions such as politics, religion, the press, prostitution, crime, business, corruption and it is precisely for this reason that all those attempts at criticism and of denunciation of the stupidity of power are more necessary than ever.
The important thing therefore is precisely to maintain a strong critical spirit, extremely independent and animated by a lucid and ruthless self-irony, in such a way as to try to eradicate the numerous defects that have always animated this universe. That is why the examples of K. Kraus with his magazine Die Fackel first and the production of our C.W. Brown on the Internet then shows us how even those who are directly involved with the world of print media, culture, publishing and education can and must in any case cultivate a bitter and ruthless sense of humor and extremely critical and provocative.
Therefore in the articles that we will dedicate to the press, to journalists and to the news in general we will do nothing but report aphorisms, jokes, excerpts of news or quotes and anecdotes derived precisely from the world of the mass media and information in general with any criticisms that this material will stimulate us to produce.
We will thus achieve the multiple aim of criticizing on the one hand the absurdity and stupidity of the contemporary world and of those who represent it and on the other of entertaining and criticizing by instructing the various audiences who will be willing to follow us and encourage us in our difficult and arduous undertaking. For those who would like to delve deeper into the discussion, I recommend taking a trip to the News pages of our blogs where you will certainly find interesting material for all your activities!
After all, nowadays it is not possible to provide information without taking into account what happens on the internet: real-time news, continuous updates, in-depth analysis, interactivity with readers, multimedia content, are concepts and behaviors now assimilated by journalists and the new audience of users that was formed with the web. All this is certainly not a passing phenomenon, but an integral part of an irreversible process in the world of communication.
And finally, I invite you to meditate and reflect on one of the quotes reported at the beginning of this post, also because it sheds a disturbing light on the world of Fake News, falsehood and hypocrisy, characteristics that have long been well-rooted in our societies, here it is: “The closer to the truth, the better the lie, and the truth itself, when it can be used, is the best lie. Isaac Asimov.”
For a complete guide on the topic you can visit:
News and events | The World of English (english-culture.com)
World news links and resources:
News, media, events, press links
The rise of Journalism, old and new press
Media in the United Kingdom of the World
Interesting articles to read. Summaries and links
