Sensationalism

"He was after a sensational story and this, of course, could not be constructed out of mere truth; not out of officially released truth, anyway. It was essential that the news-reading public should feel, first, that the community was in danger and secondly that people—well-off people, “official” people—who ought to have known better, were to blame for it."

"Sensationalism, in epistemology and psychology, a form of Empiricism that limits experience as a source of knowledge to sensation or sense perceptions. Sensationalism is a consequence of the notion of the mind as a tabula rasa, or “clean slate.” In ancient Greek philosophy, the Cyrenaics, proponents of a pleasure ethic, subscribed unreservedly to a sensationalist doctrine. The medieval Scholastics’ maxim that “there is nothing in the mind but what was previously in the senses” must be understood with Aristotelian reservations that sense data are converted into concepts… All our faculties come from the senses or . . . more precisely, from sensations; that our sensations are not the very qualities of objects [but] only modifications of our soul."

"Of real sensational journalism, as it exists in France, in Ireland, and in America, we have no trace in this country. When a journalist in Ireland wishes to create a thrill, he creates a thrill worth talking about. He denounces a leading Irish member for corruption, or he charges the whole police system with a wicked and definite conspiracy. When a French journalist desires a frisson there is a frisson; he discovers, let us say, that the President of the Republic has murdered three wives. Our yellow journalists invent quite as unscrupulously as this; their moral condition is, as regards careful veracity, about the same. But it is their mental calibre which happens to be such that they can only invent calm and even reassuring things. The fictitious version of the massacre of the envoys of Peking was mendacious, but it was not interesting, except to those who had private reasons for terror or sorrow. It was not connected with any bold and suggestive view of the Chinese situation. It revealed only a vague idea that nothing could be impressive except a great deal of blood. Real sensationalism, of which I happen to be very fond, may be either moral or immoral. But even when it is most immoral, it requires moral courage. For it is one of the most dangerous things on earth genuinely to surprise anybody. If you make any sentient creature jump, you render it by no means improbable that it will jump on you. But the leaders of this movement have no moral courage or immoral courage; their whole method consists in saying, with large and elaborate emphasis, the things which everybody else says casually, and without remembering what they have said. When they brace themselves up to attack anything, they never reach the point of attacking anything which is large and real, and would resound with the shock. They do not attack the army as men do in France, or the judges as men do in Ireland, or the democracy itself as men did in England a hundred years ago. They attack something like the War Office--something, that is, which everybody attacks and nobody bothers to defend, something which is an old joke in fourth-rate comic papers, just as a man shows he has a weak voice by straining it to shout as they show the hopelessly unsensational nature of their minds when they really try to be sensational."

"Perhaps MacKinnon should reflect on these suggestions that the censorship issue is not so simple-minded, so transparently gender-against-gender, as she insists. She should stop calling names long enough to ask whether personal sensationalism, hyperbole, and bad arguments are really what the cause of sexual equality now needs."

"Herzog is a miserable, hateful, malevolent, avaricious, money-hungry, nasty, sadistic, treacherous, blackmailing, cowardly, thoroughly dishonest creep. His so-called ‘talent’ consists of nothing but tormenting helpless creatures and, if necessary, torturing them to death or simply murdering them. He doesn’t care about anyone or anything except his wretched career as a so-called filmmaker. Driven by a pathological addiction to sensationalism, he creates the most senseless difficulties and dangers, risking other people’s safety and even their lives -just so he can eventually say that he, Herzog, has beaten seemingly unbeatable odds."

"When scholars abandon rigor for rhetoric, they do more than misinform—they become complicit in injustice."

"We must remember how easily fear can masquerade as scholarship, and how quickly ideology can distort inquiry. We must distinguish between critique and condemnation, between analysis and accusation. … When we abandon rigor for rhetoric, we do more than misinform—we may become complicit in injustice."

"To the seeker after the new, or the sensational, to those who expect a sinister frisson from modern music, it is my melancholy duty to point out that all the bomb throwing and guillotining has already taken place."

"The world is our field, prevention is our aim."

"Having adopted the Bible as our only Rule of Faith and Practice, and having ascertained that it is both the Doctrine and Practice of the Bible to expose vice and sin, and having also ascertained that licentiousness, which is one of the most flagrant and abominable of all vices, is not recognized by the Bible as an exception to the general rule of exposing vice and sin–It necessarily follows, That It Is Our Duty To Expose Licentiousness."

"Just as people can watch spellbound a circus artist tumbling through the air in a phosphorized costume, so they can listen to a preacher who uses the Word of God to draw attention to himself. But a sensational preacher stimulates the senses and leaves the spirit untouched. Instead of being the way to God, his 'being different' gets in the way."

"Those who dumb down the news, trivialize the news with in-studio shouting matches passing for debate, those who tart up the news with celebrity gossip, scandal and sensationalism are playing right into the hands of those that stand to gain the most from the news being seen as irrelevant and trivial and no more or less worth your attention than the next episode of ‘American Idol' ...I worry that if it becomes no more than a reality show, something that could be scripted and rigged behind the scenes without anyone really getting upset about it, that our freedom of the press will become another one of those constitutionally granted rights that can be watered down and eventually taken away from us."

"Some of the most lurid and sensational findings of the Bryce report on German 'atrocities' in Belgium concerned the alleged mistreatment of women and children. This extract recounts 'many well-established cases of the slaughter … of whole families'; incidents of women and children being used as human shields during combat; 'numerous' cases of rape; and horrific examples of children being bayoneted by drunken German troops. The 'evidence' on which the committee based its allegations was, in many cases, extremely flimsy."

"As a United States Senator, I am not proud of the way in which the Senate has been made a publicity platform for irresponsible sensationalism. I am not proud of the reckless abandon in which unproved charges have been hurled from this side of the aisle. I am not proud of the obviously staged, undignified counter charges that have been attempted in retaliation from the other side of the aisle."

"If at all, he was under any pressure or he was being coerced either obliquely, directly, implicitly that certain people be named and others deleted, was it not incumbent upon him to make it public at that point of time. Sensationalism formed the staple of his tenure', to debate the CAG reports at any forum of his choice. Vinod Rai was perhaps "saving these little nuggets of sensationalism for what is a post-retirement pension plan these days — that you write and create enough sensationalism around it...it would be my pleasure to demolish the findings which he had come to in his report so that the nation comes to know conclusively what really was the truth."

"They don't want people to have any heroes. I've got nothing against criticism of political figures, but that's different from a personal attack. It's easier to do sensationalism and character assassination than focus on the real issues."

"This is a sound bite! This is entertainment! This is sensationalism!"

"I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train."