Fråga: Vad tror det är som driver människan framåt? Själv är jag böjd till att tro att girigheten är den ultima drivkraften. Då menar jag girighet i både psykiskt och fysiskt plan. D.v.s en girighet i mental och materiell åtrå. Jag tror då följdaktligen att girighet är det som formar vårt samhälle. Inte så direkt upplyftande eller hur? (Samuel Sannsell)
Svar: Borgare brukar säga att människan drivs av egennyttan. Gunnar Adler Karlsson skrev att vi drivs framåt av vår lathet (därav alla tids och människobesparande uppfinningar). En del tror att de kan hitta den genetiska koden som förklarar artens vilja att växa och utvecklas, andra att det är svårt att se nån utveckling överhuvudtaget. Själv tror jag at vi drivs framåt av vår kultur. Vårt sociala vara. Poängen med den tesen är att en kultur kan fyllas med olika gemensamma drivkrafter. I ett samhälle som premierar egennyttan, får den större betydelse. I ett samhälle som premierar samarbete får det beteendet större betydelse. Visst föder din tanke deppiga dagar. Men jag läste en gång några rader om mänsklighetens märkliga förmåga att sätta sig själv inför hotet om utplåning (genom kärnvapenkriget). Det märkliga stod det, är inte att människan har detta terrorvapen i sin hand. Det fantastiska är att man trots fingrarna på knappen under femtio år, ännu inte tryckt av.
|
It's no mystery why many of us in the media can't get enough of the fabricators Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass, the latter of whom concocted more than a score of bogus feature stories for the New Republic (and who wrote for other magazines, including this one, once) in the mid-1990s. Anyone--journalist, student, academic--who has ever stared at a blank screen, their brains grinding emptiness, and thought, How can I fill this hole? knows that in those desperate moments before a deadline, almost anyone can do almost anything: make stuff up, plagiarize, scribble senseless half-truths.
|
Art is a private thing, the artist makes it for himself; a comprehensible work is the product of a journalist. We need works that are strong, straight, precise, and forever beyond understanding.
|
We deplore the arbitrary nature of this arrest of a young independent journalist who was just doing his job and who is being accused without any evidence of belonging to an extremist group. It will be an outrage if he gets a long prison sentence just for reporting something that displeases the Uzbek authorities.
|
More than illness or death, the American journalist fears standing alone against the whim of his owners or the prejudices of his audience. Deprive William Safire of the insignia of the New York Times, and he would have a hard time selling his truths to a weekly broadsheet in suburban Duluth.
|
The dominant and most deep-dyed trait of the journalist is his timorousness. Where the novelist fearlessly plunges into the water of self-exposure, the journalist stands trembling on the shore in his beach robe. The journalist confines himself to the clean, gentlemanly work of exposing the grieves and shames of others.
|
If a person is not talented enough to be a novelist, not smart enough to be a lawyer, and his hands are too shaky to perform operations, he becomes a journalist.
|
There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, as an independent press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone. The business of the journalist is to destroy the truth; to lie outright; to pervert; to vilify; to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell the country for his daily bread. You know it and I know it and what folly is this toasting an independent press. We are the tools and vassals of the rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.
|
'Exactly,' he said, while he leant forward excitedly, for all the world like a Jack-in-the-box let loose. 'Precisely; and you are a journalist - call yourself one, at least - and it should be part of your business to notice and describe people. I don't mean only the wonderful personage with the clear Saxon features, the fine blue eyes, the noble brow and classic face, but the ordinary person - the person who represents ninety out of every hundred of his own kind - the average Englishman, say, of the middle classes, who is neither very tall nor very short, who wears a moustache which is neither fair nor dark, but which masks his mouth, and a top hat which hides the shape of his head and brow, a man, in fact, who dresses like hundreds of his fellow-creatures, moves like them, speaks like them, has no peculiarity.'
|
If, for instance, they have heard something from the postman, they attribute it to a semi-official statement; if they have fallen into conversation with a stranger at a bar, they can conscientiously describe him as a source that has hitherto proved unimpeachable. It is only when the journalist is reporting a whim of his own, and one to which he attaches minor importance, that he defines it as the opinion of well-informed circles.
|
Art is a private thing, the artist makes it for himself; a comprehensible work is the product of a journalist.... We need works that are stron...
|
Excerpts from an interview with Cardinal Ratzinger by German journalist Peter Seewald
Cardinal Ratzinger is the Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican's foremost advisor on matters of doctrine.
Seewald: Are we allowed to make use of animals, and even to eat them?
Ratzinger: That is a very serious question. At any rate, we can see that they are given into our care, that we cannot just do whatever we want with them. Animals, too, are God's creatures, and even if they do not have the same direct relation to God that man has, they are creatures of his will, creatures we must respect as companions in creation and as important elements in the creation.
|
I review novels to make money, because it is easier for a sluggard to write an article a fortnight than a book a year, because the writer is soothed by the opiate of action, the crank by posing as a good journalist, and having an air hole. I dislike it. I do it and I am always resolving to give it up.
|
A broken heart is what makes life so wonderful five years later, when you see the guy in an elevator and he is fat and smoking a cigar and saying long-time-no-see.
|
Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people's vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse.
|
The making of a journalist: no ideas and the ability to express them.
|
A journalist and an information architect face exactly the same problem - how to give shape to the pile of information in front of you in a way that will make it easy and natural for people to comprehend. I can't imagine any better preparation for the work I do now.
|
You should always have high hopes. Otherwise you won't be disappointed.
|
It was a fatal day when the public discovered that the pen is mightier than the paving-stone, and can be made as offensive as the brickbat. They at once sought for the journalist, found him, developed him, and made him their industrious and well-paid servant. It is greatly to be regretted, for both their sakes.
|
A journalist is basically a chronicler, not an interpreter of events. Where else in society do you have the license to eavesdrop on so many different conversations as you have in journalism? Where else can you delve into the life of our times?
|
You cannot hope to bribe or twist (thank God!) the British journalist. But, seeing what the man will do unbribed, there's no occasion to.
|
A journalist is a person who has mistaken their calling.
|
Every journalist has a novel in him, which is an excellent place for it.
|
If you're a good journalist, what you do is live a lot of things vicariously, and report them for other people who want to live vicariously.
|
A veteran journalist has never had time to think twice before he writes.
|