James Reston

James Reston on 10 January 1972

James Barrett Reston (November 3, 1909 – December 6, 1995), nicknamed "Scotty", was a prominent American journalist whose career spanned the mid 1930s to the early 1990s. Associated for many years with The New York Times, he became perhaps the most powerful, influential, and widely-read journalist of his era.

Quotes

• People are always dying in the Times who don't seem to die in other papers, and they die at greater length and maybe even with a little more grace.
  • New Leader (The New York Times (7 January 1963)

• Europe has a press that stresses opinions; America a press, radio, and television that emphasize news.
  • The President and the Press, The Artillery of the Press (1966)

• The rising power of the United States in world affairs … requires, not a more compliant press, but a relentless barrage of facts and criticism.... Our job in this age, as I see it, is not to serve as cheerleaders for our side in the present world struggle but to help the largest possible number of people to see the realities of the changing and convulsive world in which American policy must operate.
  • The Artillery of the Press, introduction (1966)

• In foreign policy you have to wait twenty-five years to see how it comes out.
  • International Herald Tribune (18 November 1991)

• He inherited some good instincts from his Quaker forebears but by diligent hard work, he overcame them.
  • Statement about Richard Nixon, as quoted in an article by Joe Sharkey in The New York Times (12 March 2000)

• Governments are the only vessels that leak from the top
  • Phrase in the article “Big 4’s Press System Seen As Approved by Reporters” in The New York Times (9 November 1946)