“The lowest form of popular culture -- lack of information, misinformation, misinformation, and a contempt for the truth or the reality of most people's lives -- has overrun real journalism. Today, ordinary Americans are being stuffed with garbage.”
“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.”
“The greatest felony in the news business today is to be behind, or to miss a big story. So speed and quantity substitute for thoroughness and quality, for accuracy and context. The pressure to compete, the fear somebody else will make the splash first, creates a frenzied environment in which a blizzard of information is presented and serious questions may not be raised.”
“We had very little time -- Bob and Felt in the garage together had very little time to have meetings and conversations in the course of a couple years. The object was to get as much information, as much context, as much certainty of things we had obtained elsewhere,”
“It was not about a break-in, a single break-in. It was about a pattern of illegal activities involving beating up members of the political opposition physically, stealing their memos, wiretapping political opponents, breaking into offices of psychiatrists, firebombing think tanks,”
“Beyond this, I can only give you my personal assurance that our sole motivation in working on 'The Final Days' was to report the truth: neither money nor any preconceived disposition regarding Mr. Nixon was a factor in our reporting.”
“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.”