Mass Media Quotes – Perspectives on Communication and Society

"It is the emergence of mass media which makes possible the use of propaganda techniques on a societal scale. The orchestration of press, radio and television to create a continuous, lasting and total environment renders the influence of propaganda virtually unnoticed precisely because it creates a constant environment. Mass media provides the essential link between the individual and the demands of the technological society."

Jacques Ellul

"The fact that there is a gap between journalists and the public is shown above all by the fact that the former are much more interested in the opinion of their colleagues than in the judgment of their readers. Compare this with a healthy system, for example that of restaurants. As we [...] have seen, restaurant owners care about the opinions of their diners, not those of other restaurant owners, which keeps restaurant owners doing what their job is; it prevents the industry as a whole from moving away from diners' interests. In addition, skin in the game creates diversity, and monoculture is prevented. Economic uncertainty exacerbates the situation. Journalists currently work in the most insecure profession imaginable: the majority live hand-to-mouth, and ostracism by colleagues would be fatal. This makes them easy victims for manipulative lobbyists, as has been seen in connection with genetically modified organisms (GMOs), the wars in Syria, and more. In this profession, if you say something unpopular about Brexit, GMOs, or Putin, you're toast. It's the exact opposite of professions where being a follower is punished."

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

"Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed; everything else is public relations."

George Orwell

"American journalism is a class institution, serving the rich and spurning the poor."

Upton Sinclair

"In Washington 52 years now I've seen a lot of change but there's one change the dwarfs all the other changes in importance and that is that we no longer have in any real sense a free media and that is big that could not be bigger"

Ray McGovern

"The predominant reason mainstream news reporters say things that aren’t true is because in order to be hired by mainstream news outlets, you need to jack your mind into a power-serving worldview that is not based in truth."

Caitlin Johnstone

"Journalism is one of the devices whereby industrial autocracy keeps its control over political democracy; it is the day-by-day, between-elections propaganda, whereby the minds of the people are kept in a state of acquiescence, so that when the crisis of an election comes, they go to the polls and cast their ballots for either one of the two candidates of their exploiters."

Upton Sinclair

"Ready made opinions can be distributed day by day through the press, radio, and so on, again and again, till they reach the nerve cell and implant a fixed pattern in the brain. Consequently, guided public opinion is the result, according to Pavlovian theoreticians, of good propaganda technique, and the polls [are] a verification of the temporary successful action of the Pavlovian machinations on the mind."

Joost A.M. Meerloo

"Continual suggestion and slow hypnosis in the wake of mechanical mass communication promotes uniformity of the mind and may lure the public into the "happy era" of adjustment, integration and equalization, in which individual opinion is completely stereotyped (or strawmanned/made a caricature of)."

Joost A.M. Meerloo

"If people in the media cannot decide whether they are in the business of reporting news or manufacturing propaganda, it is all the more important that the public understand that difference, and choose their news sources accordingly."

Thomas Sowell

"He who dictates and formulates the words and phrases we use, he who is master of the press and radio, is master of the mind. Repeat mechanically your assumptions and suggestions, diminish the opportunity for communicating dissent and opposition. This is the formula for political conditioning of the masses"

Joost A.M. Meerloo

"The media may constitute the most powerful education system ever known to man."

Fred Fedler

"[...] All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical, and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered. The medium is the message. Any understanding of social and cultural change is impossible without a knowledge of the way media work as environments.[...] All media are extensions of some human faculty — psychic or physical. [...] Media, by altering the environment, evoke in us unique ratios of sense perceptions. The extension of any one sense alters the way we think and act—the way we perceive the world. When these ratios change, men change.[...]"

Marshall McLuhan

"The common interests very largely elude public opinion entirely, and can be managed only by a specialised class."

Walter Lippmann

"News is what someone wants suppressed. Everything else is advertising."

Katharine Graham

"I always tell people. News is the most highly developed form of fiction. The most difficult."

Donald Pleasence

"We’re dealing with a culture of teenage babies, they can watch TV, do their homework, and listen to music all at the same time. The strongest appeal you can make is emotional. If you can get their emotions going, make them forget their logic…you’ve got them. At MTV, we don’t shoot for the 14 year olds – WE OWN THEM,"

Robert (Bob) Pittman

"The very first thing we have to understand is that the mainstream media are not a mirror of reality. Not even a distorted mirror of reality, but provide us with a reality that is constructed according to its very own points of view. Which is made to influence us in a certain way."

Prof. Dr. Michael Meyen