Mass Media Quotes – Perspectives on Communication and Society

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false."

William Casey

"The only safe vaccine is one that is never used."

Dr. James R. Shannon

"My professional career has been one long decline—from musician to lawyer and then to politician."

Lothar de Maizière

"Incidence rates are being measured, but not the economic and psychological collateral damage. We need to adapt our pandemic measures accordingly."

Jochen Schweizer

"Unfortunately, science has become political. The virus has become political. And I have said that I do not want to comment on the feasibility and proportionality of this. That is a political question."

Prof. Dr. Hendrik Streeck

"In former times, torture was used. Nowadays, the press is used. That is certainly progress."

Oscar Wilde

"The possibilities for manipulation have, of course, increased considerably in the age of mass media."

Arthur Miller

"The news and the truth are not the same thing."

Walter Lippmann

"People aren’t actually that stupid — we’re going to make them that way through television."

Hans Joachim Kulenkampff

"Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic disease of the 20th century and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press. Such as it is, however, the press has become the greatest power within the Western countries, more powerful than the legislative power, the executive, and the judiciary. And one would then like to ask: By what law has it been elected and to whom is it responsible? In the communist East a journalist is frankly appointed as a state official. But who has granted Western journalists their power, for how long a time, and with what prerogatives?"

Alexander Solschenizyn

""Freedom of the press is the freedom of two hundred rich people to spread their opinions. As the production of newspapers and magazines requires ever greater capital, the circle of people who publish press organs is becoming smaller and smaller. This makes our dependence ever greater and ever more dangerous. There are oases in the German press where the air of freedom still blows, but how many of my colleagues can say the same? Those who are rich are free. That's not from Karl Marx, but from Paul Sethe. Since journalists are not rich, they are not free either.""

Paul Sethe

"Freedom of the press in the West, which is much better than elsewhere, is ultimately the freedom of 200 rich people to publish their opinions."

Peter Scholl-Latour

"We all know by now how dangerously the media's normal watchdog function has been transformed into a ruthless destruction machine for the sake of maintaining its own economic success."

Edzard Reuter

"If my sons did not want wars, there would be none."

Gutle Schnapper Rothschild

"Yes. I have decided that I will no longer work for public broadcasters for the foreseeable future, which means, for example, that I will no longer shoot any episodes of ”Tatort." I recently had two requests for public broadcasting productions, both of which I turned down. Because I don't want anything to do with the way they handled their reporting during the coronavirus pandemic. The one-sidedness and obvious government loyalty of ARD and ZDF leave me speechless."

Tom Bohn

"If you scare people enough, they will demand removal of freedom. This is the path to tyranny."

Elon Musk

"In the long run, even the most efficiently organized propaganda can do nothing against the truth."

Albert Schweitzer

"Young people are accused of using violence. But are we not in a perpetual state of violence? Because we were born and raised in prison, we no longer notice that we are stuck in a hole with our hands and feet chained and a gag in our mouths. What do you call a lawful state? A law that turns the vast majority of citizens into servile cattle in order to satisfy the unnatural needs of an insignificant and corrupt minority? And this law, supported by brute military force and the stupid cleverness of its agents, this law is eternal, brute force, contrary to justice and common sense, and I will fight against it with my mouth and my hands wherever I can."

Karl Georg Büchner