Alexander Cockburn on the reality of tell-all journalism:

“Dempster, a public-school boy in the twilight of Great Britain, is franker than many of his American counterparts about the realities of the trade: that almost all journalism in the end is gossip, and that the handmaidens of gossip are treachery, envy, and spite; that while many journalists may prattle on about the public’s right to know, they are in their bones talking about their own need to tell.”