This country is at one of those junctures that occur periodically. Some in the 4^th Estate have ceded their role as watchdogs to become lapdogs and not journalists. Today’s deposit in the ‘Joy Jar’ are those brave folk willing to practice the profession of journalism because they believe in ferreting out the truth.

Mathew Felling of CBS News lists the 10 Best Journalism Quotes:

Number 10:

The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.

• Oscar Wilde

  Number 9:

  Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.

• Thomas Jefferson

  Number 8:

  There can be no higher law in journalism than to tell the truth and to shame the devil.

• Walter Lippmann

  Number 7:

  The liberty of the press is a blessing when we are inclined to write against others, and a calamity when we find ourselves overborne by the multitude of our assailants.

• Samuel Johnson

  Number 6:

  A free press can be good or bad, but, most certainly, without freedom a press will never be anything but bad.

• Albert Camus

  Number Five:

  Journalism can never be silent: that is its greatest virtue and its greatest fault. It must speak, and speak immediately, while the echoes of wonder, the claims of triumph and the signs of horror are still in the air.

• Henry Anatole Grunwald

  Number Four: (Aka: Whenever you can think up a reason to bring up Grace Kelly, do it.)
  The freedom of the press works in such a way that there is not much freedom from it.

• Grace Kelly

  Number Three:

  News is something someone wants suppressed. Everything else is just advertising.

• Lord Northcliff

  Number Two:

  Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

• Thomas Jefferson

  Number One: (You’ll thank us for this at the picnic.)

  A news story should be like a mini skirt on a pretty woman. Long enough to cover the subject but short enough to be interesting.

• Anonymous, linked to a Texas newspaper editor

© 2007 CBS Interactive Inc.. All Rights Reserved.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-500486_162-3013288-500486.html

Tags: albert camus, cbs news, Dr Wilda, Fre Press, Freedom of the Press, Journalism, Joy Jar, Press, walter lippmann