Bill Keller Quotes

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Bill Keller

Profession : Editor

Birth : June 18, 1949

My view of social media is that it is a set of tools, not a religion.

Bill Keller

Since September 11 2001, editors in America have faced some excruciating choices, as the attempt to wage a war against a new kind of enemy sometimes strained the boundaries of our laws and values.

Bill Keller

For all of the woes besetting our business, I believe with all my heart that newspapers - whether they are distributed to your doorstep, your laptop, your iPhone or a chip implanted in your cerebral cortex - will be around for a long time.

Bill Keller

People crave trustworthy information about the world we live in. Some people want it because it is essential to the way they make a living. Some want it because they regard being well-informed as a condition of good citizenship. Some want it because they want something to exchange over dinner tables and water coolers.

Bill Keller

The curse of a journalist is that he always has more questions than answers.

Bill Keller

I don't think that there is absolute freedom of the press. We operate under laws - against libel, for instance. The idea that there is some absolute press freedom is kind of a myth.

Bill Keller

There's no question that sources sometimes have interests aside from the truth when they talk to reporters. That's why reporters have to very aggressively report against their own theses and against their initial information.

Bill Keller

I don't think fairness means that you give equal time to every point of view no matter how marginal. You weigh the sides, you do some truth-testing, you apply judgment to them.

Bill Keller

Liberation movements - operating surreptitiously and conspiratorially - thrive on discipline and suspicion, and punish deviation or dissent.

Bill Keller

Liberation movements - prizing ends over means - are not always particular about their friends or scrupulous about their transactions.

Bill Keller

I have nothing against conservative people putting out conservative commentary or doing conservative broadcasting, or liberal people doing liberal broadcasting, or conservative blogs or liberal blogs.

Bill Keller

The Democrats generally recoil from the subject of entitlements.

Bill Keller

I do care if religious doctrine becomes an excuse to exclude my fellow citizens from the rights and protections our country promises.

Bill Keller

The most obvious drawback of social media is that they are aggressive distractions.

Bill Keller

Every time my TweetDeck shoots a new tweet to my desktop, I experience a little dopamine spritz that takes me away from... from... wait, what was I saying?

Bill Keller

There is something decidedly faux about the camaraderie of Facebook, something illusory about the connectedness of Twitter.

Bill Keller

Whether or not Twitter makes you stupid, it certainly makes some smart people sound stupid.

Bill Keller

Buying an aggregator and calling it a content play is a little like a company's announcing plans to improve its cash position by hiring a counterfeiter.

Bill Keller

If a candidate for president said he believed that space aliens dwell among us, would that affect your willingness to vote for him? Personally, I might not disqualify him out of hand; one out of three Americans believe we have had Visitors and, hey, who knows? But I would certainly want to ask a few questions.

Bill Keller

The queen of aggregation is, of course, Arianna Huffington, who has discovered that if you take celebrity gossip, adorable kitten videos, posts from unpaid bloggers and news reports from other publications, array them on your Web site and add a left-wing soundtrack, millions of people will come.

Bill Keller