Oscar Wilde on journalism

“In England, Journalism, except in a few well-known instances, not having been carried to such excesses of brutality, is still a great factor, a really remarkable power. The tyranny that it proposes to exercise over people’s private lives seems to me quite extraordinary.
“The fact is that the public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything except what is worth knowing.
“Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesmen-like habits, supplies the demands. In centuries before ours, the public nailed the ears of journalists to the pump.
“That was quite hideous.
“In this century journalists have nailed their own ears to the keyhole.
“That is much worse.”

OSCAR WILDE

(Socialist Standard, July 1923)