The reality is that the media are probably the most powerful of all our institutions today and they, or rather we [journalists], too often are squandering our power and ignoring our obligations. The consequence of our abdication of responsibility is the ugly spectacle of idiot culture!

Carl Bernstein

Categorized in : Reality Responsibility Powerful

You can't serve the public good without the truth as a bottom line.

Carl Bernstein

lines honesty truth

The lowest form of popular culture - lack of information, misinformation, disinformation, and a contempt for the truth or the reality of most people's lives - has overrun real journalism.

Carl Bernstein

real ordinary people

Good journalism should challenge people, not just mindlessly amuse them.

Carl Bernstein

journalism challenges people

We are in the process of creating what deserves to be called the idiot culture. Not an idiot sub-culture, which every society has bubbling beneath the surface and which can provide harmless fun; but the culture itself. For the first time, the weird and the stupid and the coarse are becoming our cultural norm, even our cultural ideal.

Carl Bernstein

creating stupid fun

I think all good reporting is the same thing - the best attainable version of the truth.

Carl Bernstein

versions thinking

For the first time, the weird and the stupid and the coarse are becoming our cultural norms, even our cultural ideal.

Carl Bernstein

stupid culture firsts

What will a Hillary Clinton presidency look like? The answer by now seems obvious: It will look like her presidential campaign, which in turn looks increasingly like the first Clinton presidency. Which is to say, high-minded ideals, lowered execution, half truths, outright lies (and imaginary flights), take-no prisoners politics, some very good policy ideas, a presidential spouse given to wallowing in anger and self-pity, and a succession of aides and surrogates pushed under the bus when things don't go right. Which is to say, often.

Carl Bernstein

self lying ideas

Increasingly, the picture of our society as rendered in our media is illusionary and delusionary: disfigured, unreal, out of touch with reality, disconnected from the true context of our life. It is disfigured by celebrity, by celebrity worship, by gossip, by sensationalism, by denial of our societies

Carl Bernstein

gossip media reality

June 17, 1972. Nine o'clock Saturday morning. Early for the telephone. Woodward fumbled for the receiver and snapped awake. The city editor of the Washington Post was on the line. Five men had been arrested earlier that morning in a burglary attempt at Democratic headquarters, carrying photographic equipment and electronic gear. Could he come in?

Carl Bernstein

june morning men

The failures of the press have contributed immensely to the emergence of a talk-show nation, in which public discourse is reduced to ranting and raving and posturing. We now have a mainstream press whose news agenda is increasingly influenced by this netherworld.

Carl Bernstein

mainstream agendas news

In the John Paul II days, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger had the advantage of staying in his cupboard - the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - exchanging views only with the Pope, and speaking publicly only through carefully written missives on doctrinal issues.

Carl Bernstein

doctrine issues views

The Congress is a dysfunctional institution; its broken. One of our three branches of government is broken.

Carl Bernstein

branches government broken

Donald Trump is american neo-fascist. The word "neo" meaning "new", has a lot to do with it, a new kind of fascist in our culture, dealing with an authoritarian demagogic point of view, nativist, anti-immigrant, racism, bigotry that he appeals to.

Carl Bernstein

kind racism culture

There had always been black people in and out of our house, and from the outset I had been taught that for them life was defined by struggle and filled with injustice.

Carl Bernstein

struggle house people

Radical thought has inspired many of the great political and social reform movements in American history, from ending slavery to establishing the minimum wage.

Carl Bernstein

reform movement political

Today, ordinary Americans are being stuffed with garbage.

Carl Bernstein

garbage ordinary today

Public policy in the twentieth century was about protecting and expanding the social compact, based on recognition that effective government at the federal level provides rules and services and safety measures that contribute to a better society.

Carl Bernstein

safety levels government

All institutions have lapses, even great ones, especially by individual rogue employees - famously in recent years at The Washington Post, The New York Times, and the three original TV networks.

Carl Bernstein

three new-york years

Even at the end of a presidential election campaign, we have no way to know what Mitt Romney really believes.

Carl Bernstein

presidential campaigns believe

The American Revolution and Declaration of Independence, it has often been argued, were fueled by the most radical of all American political ideas.

Carl Bernstein

independence political ideas