Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes About Journalism

• Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers is another.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Fiction, Literature, World

  "On the Cryptic and the Elliptic", All Things Considered, 1908.

• Journalism largely consists of saying 'Lord Jones is Dead' to people who never knew that Lord Jones was alive.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Funny, Business, Humor

  "The style guide editor on ... peer pressure and using people's proper names" by David Marsh, www.theguardian.com. December 8, 2013.

• Journalism only tells us what men are doing; it is fiction that tells us what they are thinking, and still more what they are feeling. If a new scientific theory finds the soul of a man in his dreams, at least it ought not to leave out his day-dreams. And all fiction is only a diary of day-dreams instead of days. And this profound preoccupation of men's minds with certain things always eventually has an effect even on the external expression of the age.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Dream, Men, Thinking

• People accuse journalism of being too personal; but to me it has always seemed far too impersonal. It is charged with tearing away the veils from private life; but it seems to me to be always dropping diaphanous but blinding veils between men and men. The Yellow Press is abused for exposing facts which are private; I wish the Yellow Press did anything so valuable. It is exactly the decisive individual touches that it never gives; and a proof of this is that after one has met a man a million times in the newspapers it is always a complete shock and reversal to meet him in real life.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Real, Men, Yellow

• Everyone seems to assume that the unscrupulous parts of journalism will be the frivolous or jocular parts. This is against all ethical experience. Jokes are generally honest. Complete solemnity is almost always dishonest. The writer of the snippet merely refers to a frivolous and fugitive fact in a frivolous and fugitive way. The writer of the leading article has to write about a fact he has known for 20 minutes as though he has studied it for 20 years.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Writing, Years, Way

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