Mass Media Quotes – Perspectives on Communication and Society

"The public debating chamber is at the heart of democracy. However, it can only fulfill its function if it is intact in the sense you mentioned. Since the media constitute the public debate space in the first place, they must be designed in such a way that they do not distort it in favor of powerful interest groups. By their very nature, corporate media cannot perform such a task, as their integration into economic power structures almost inevitably makes them an instrument with which powerful economic lobby groups can covertly introduce themselves into the public debate."

Prof. Rainer Mausfeld

"The function of the press in society is to inform, but its role in society is to make money."

A. J. Liebling

"People accept the facts which come to them through existing channels. They like to hear new things in accustomed ways. They have neither the time nor the inclination to search for facts that are not readily available to them."

Edward Bernays

"For the newspaper is in all literalness the bible of democracy, the book out of which a people determines its conduct. It is the only serious book most people read. It is the only book they read every day."

Walter Lippmann

"While most people in TV, radio, and the press have treated me wonderfully, some of the most important people want to pretend I don't exist."

Harry Edson Browne

"The press is hostile to the idea of liberty. Most people in the press are for big government. Most people think that the solution to anything, whether it's health care problems, education, whatever it is - it's got to be more government."

Harry Browne

"Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the U.S. media."

Noam Chomsky

"Some of the smartest people I know actively believe the press … amazing"

Elon Musk

"Television was invented to give illiterates a good reason to wear glasses."

Gabriel Laub

"Capitalism is essentially a system of mass production for the satisfaction of the needs of the masses. It pours a horn of plenty upon the common man. It has raised the average standard of living to a height never dreamed of in earlier ages. It has made accessible to millions of people enjoyments which a few generations ago were only within the reach of a small élite."

Ludwig von Mises

"It will soon be possible to transmit wireless messages around the world so simply that any individual can carry and operate his own apparatus."

Nikola Tesla

"The news is not a mirror of social conditions, but the report of an aspect that has obtruded itself."

Walter Lippmann

"I do not mean to imply that television news deliberately aims to deprive Americans of a coherent, contextual understanding of their world. I mean to say that when news is packaged as entertainment, that is the inevitable result. And in saying that the television news show entertains but does not inform, I am saying something far more serious than that we are being deprived of authentic information. I am saying we are losing our sense of what it means to be well informed."

Neil Postman

"Hitler's vast propaganda successes were accomplished with little more than the radio and loudspeaker, and without TV and tape and video recording . . . Today the art of mind control is in the process of becoming a science."

Aldous Huxley

"Can you blame me if I am pursued by the thought of how much we could do to remedy social evils, if only we had an honest and disinterested press?"

Upton Sinclair

"The announcement 'This is the First German Television with the Tagesschau' is often the halal to attempted dumbing down of the people."

Volker Bräutigam

"It is impossible for me to estimate how many of my early impressions of the world, correct and the opposite, came to me through newspapers. Homicide, adultery, no-hit pitching, and Balkanism were concepts that, left to my own devices, I would have encountered much later in life."

A. J. Liebling

"Sure, the media don't depict reality, they create it! And that's why we need counter-publicity!"

Niklas Luhmann