Maybe we're all a little too desperate these days for a simple formula to explain how our safe world came unhinged. That, as much as anything, may explain one of the more enduring conspiracy theories of the moment, the notion that we are about to send a quarter of a million American soldiers to war for the sake of Israel.

Bill Keller

Categorized in : War Simple Israel

One of the most important disciplines in journalism is to challenge your working premises.

Bill Keller

discipline important challenges

The queen of aggregation is, of course, Arianna Huffington, who has discovered that if you take celebrity gossip, adorable kitten videos, posts from unpaid bloggers and news reports from other publications, array them on your website and add a left-wing soundtrack, millions of people will come.

Bill Keller

celebrity-gossip queens wings

It's a considerable source of tragedy in the world that people stay in powerful jobs long past the point where they're a spent force.

Bill Keller

powerful jobs past

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.

Bill Keller

views mean thinking

I'm convinced that the most important division in human affairs is probably not the one between left and right, liberal and conservative. It's the one between zealotry and understanding, between absolute conviction and compromise, between preachers and politicians.

Bill Keller

division understanding important

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.

Bill Keller

privacy treasure thinking

My dad was an engineer, and he became the CEO of Chevron. His was an engineer's mind-set: Everything's kind of a problem how do you approach the problem?

Bill Keller

dad kind mind

Anyone with an Internet service provider can be a pundit or whatever they want.

Bill Keller

pundits internet want

My feeling about the Internet or anything else is that the more it tends to become a cult, the more I want to call it into question.

Bill Keller

internet want feelings

Liberation movements - operating surreptitiously and conspiratorially - thrive on discipline and suspicion, and punish deviation or dissent.

Bill Keller

deviation discipline movement

Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, has on several occasions talked about transparency as an absolute principle. I don't personally believe that.

Bill Keller

wikileaks principles believe

I'm a Capricorn, actually.

Bill Keller

capricorns

I think there's a misconception that I'm opposed to social media.

Bill Keller

media social thinking

I make a joke that I'm the Internet curmudgeon, but 'wary' is a good way to put it.

Bill Keller

curmudgeon internet way

I don't think anyone at Fox believes they are producing even-handed, impartial coverage.

Bill Keller

foxes believe thinking

I don't have dating tips.

Bill Keller

dating

You don't want to go around willy-nilly suing news organizations. That's probably self-defeating.

Bill Keller

suing organization self

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.

Bill Keller

cash calling play

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?

Bill Keller

dopamine waiting littles

Casual reliance on unnamed sources...corrodes our credibility and, in cases that are rare but not rare enough, may abet journalistic malpractice.

Bill Keller

abet enough may