Russell Blackford Quotes

“A problem with trusting the mainstream media these days is the immense decline in journalistic standards and editorial support introduced for cost-cutting reasons.”

“Every time someone claims that using certain language is 'not ok' it just makes me want to go out and use exactly that language. Surely they must realise that that is how people respond psychologically and how counterproductive they are being. No one wants to be told what they can say.”

“If the news media want to be trusted they need to report the facts objectively and accurately, not tell us what to think about an event without telling us exactly what the event was.”

“Occasional reminder to people in the news media. A troll is not a stray person who makes a nasty, perhaps fair perhaps not, criticism of a celebrity whom you're sympathetic to. A troll is an online provocateur, someone who makes maddening comments to fish for outraged responses.”

“Religion is inherently controversial. It's quite okay to satirize religious teachings or practices, to criticize them harshly, to try to get people to abandon them, etc. There's no need to be 'moderate' about this.”

“Science is implausible to untutored human common sense, but that in no way casts doubt on the correctness of well-established scientific findings. Feelings of transcendence are simply that — feelings — and, as such, have no capacity to reveal truths about a world external to the people who have them.”

“Straight news reporting should give the reader an accurate and (as far as humanly possible) objective account of the facts. It should not sneak in editorializing by claiming that what someone said was 'inappropriate' or 'problematic' or 'offensive'. That's for the reader to judge. If you purport to be publishing straight news reports, and yet you engage in this kind of semi-covert editorialising, your readers will notice and decide that you're a biased source.”

“When did the mainstream media and the political culture get taken over by some nineteenth-century Methodist Temperance Union? The puritanism has reached ridiculous proportions of late, and from the political Left almost as much as the Right.”

“You don't know whether or not what someone else says is heartfelt. You might be inclined to judge that they're sincere from the way they express themselves, but it's not a publicly ascertainable fact. I cringe whenever I see a news report that somebody said something 'heartfelt'.”

“Today, we each need to guard against various large and small Outrage Machines of the political Left. Otherwise, we can be shunned, harassed, dogpiled, smeared, publicly shamed, devastatingly labelled, falsely accused of wrongdoing, or otherwise hurt and harmed for trivial, dubious, or non-existent transgressions. Our good reputations can be destroyed, our jobs can be threatened or ended, and our careers can be ruined.”