Fred W. Friendly Quotations

TV is bigger than any story it reports. It's the greatest teaching tool since the printing press.

A composite is a euphemism for a lie. It's disorderly. It's dishonest and it's not journalism.

The news is the one thing the networks can point to with pride. Everything else they do is crap, and they know it.

Television makes so much at its worst that it can't afford to do its best.

Television was supposed to be a national park. Instead it has become a money machine. It's a commodity now, just like pork bellies.

Television was supposed to be a national park. (Instead) it has become a money machine... It's a commodity now, just like pork bellies.

What we don't know as a nation and as a citizen can kill us.

No mighty king, no ambitious emperor, no pope, or prophet ever dreamt of such an awesome pulpit, so potent a magic wand [television].

While the Constitution is what the judges say it is, a public issue is something that Walter Cronkite or John Chancellor recognizes as such. The media by themselves do not make the decisions, but on behalf of themselves and larger interests they certify what is or is not on the nation's agenda.

Today's reporter is forced to become an educator more concerned with explaining the news than with being first on the scene.

I have a motto: My job is not to make up anybody's mind but to make the agony of decision making so intense that you can escape only by thinking.