Quote Box   

"The New York Times has now twice – two separate occasions – disclosed programs both times they had been asked not to publish those stories by senior administration officials. They went ahead anyway... What is doubly disturbing for me is that not only have they gone forward with these stories, but they've been rewarded for it, for example, in the case of the terrorist surveillance program, by being awarded the Pulitzer Prize for outstanding journalism. I think that is a disgrace."
– Vice President Dick Cheney, in Nebraska on June 27, commenting on a Times story about the monitoring of bank records maintained by SWIFT, a Belgium-based financial clearinghouse

"As a breed, good reporters are a mutant species, often completely lacking in social graces, fashion sense and normal interests. They don't have many friends other than themselves, and even those relationships involve unhealthy levels of suspicion.

"Show a good reporter a bright, sunny day and he'll wonder if the ozone is burned to hell. This is not a matter of training, but of molecular chemistry. They're like hunting dogs, in love with the chase and deliriously happy to go sniffing after any old bird, regardless of hue."
– Los Angles Times columnist Steve Lopez

"It's quite simple. Don't take this the wrong way: I've enjoyed talking to you but it doesn't make the Hearst Corporation another dollar."
– Hearst CEO Victor F. Ganzi, explaining to the New York Times' Richard Siklos why, while he had consented to a rare interview via telephone, he would not meet in person or pose for a photograph

"During uncertain times people will try to find stability, even if that means leaving jobs they love. Sadly, corporations do not process that factoid. They report that the company mission will provide for the reporters and editors who ensure the future of newspapering, but those vague, lawyered statements are never delivered personally, in a manner that would suggest there will be action behind the words. Action that would guarantee carrying on the good fight."
– Matt Golas, editor of the Times-Leader in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, referring to a staff exodus while McClatchy searched for a buyer for the former Knight Ridder paper. A group of local investors agreed to buy the Times-Leader in late June.