Press Quotes – Reflections on the Role of the Press

"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

"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

"A handful of people control the world's media. Today there are about six people, soon there will be only four people who will take over everything: all newspapers, magazines, all films, all television channels. There was a time when there were different opinions in the media, there was a variety of directions in the media. Today there is only one opinion, which is formed within four to five days, then it becomes the opinion of everyone"

Mike Nichols

"There is no such thing, at this stage of the world’s history in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dare write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my papers, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone. The business of the journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press? We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes."

John Swinton

"The business of the journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it,"

John Swinton

"I say we close down the national media for 30 days and watch 80% of the world's problems go away."

Unbekannter Autor

"And so, one must keep repeating the truth, because error is constantly being preached all around us as well—not by individuals, but by the masses. In newspapers and encyclopedias, in schools and universities—everywhere error is on top, and it feels comfortable and at ease, in the awareness of the majority that is on its side."

Wolfgang von Goethe

"The influential news and press agencies are deeply intertwined with the interests of high finance."

Christian Faltermeier

"The mass media are a kind of mouthpiece for the consciousness of the population. If this powerful instrument falls into the wrong hands, it can cause more damage than all available nuclear weapons combined."

Christian Faltermeier

"Perhaps the following current example can best illustrate this point. We do not live in the clerical age, where lay people and clergy fought each other; nor do we live in the state-political age, when state officials and the people fought over democracy. The free growth area in the scientific age lies in a new pair of tensions, namely between research and knowledge. This pair of conflicts is still largely unclear.

We scholars all disguise ourselves as researchers, just as the old clergy behaved like saints in order to hold back the division between clergy and people. This does not change the fact that today the danger of the sciences becoming ossified is looming large.

Scholars are competent and therefore completely incapable of loving the overthrow of their virtue. They are science officials, and they always oppose amateurs. But since research is as much a part of science as the Holy Spirit is part of the Church, there is a great deal of pseudo-research competing with the progress of free research; and only the former is conscientiously supported by official bodies and foundations, because only this appears worthy of support to the professional officials of science.

Such harmful research acts according to the principle: Wash my fur, but don't get me wet.

It researches cancer according to Pasteur's outdated ideas, as if it were rabies.

It examines religion according to Wellhausen's ideas, but because it bases its research on ancient authority, it is extensively funded.

As long as scholars and researchers both remain poor, genuine research has prospects. That was the case until 1900. Today, the prognosis for research is deteriorating because grateful peoples are generously funding “science.” Thus, power is shifting to the side of the knowledgeable, against the researchers.

Our doctor factories and Rockefeller fellows are eloquent witnesses to this."

Eugen Rosenstock

"When I sometimes leaf through my company's press review in the morning, I get the feeling that the range of opinion used to be broader. There is an astonishing homogeneity in German editorial offices when it comes to weighing up and classifying information. The pressure to conform in the minds of journalists seems to me to be quite high."

Frank-Walter Steinmeier

"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."

Joost A.M. Meerloo

"Name me a country where journalists and politicians get along, and I'll tell you there's no democracy."

Hugh Carleton Greene

"Mass media do not convey reality, they create it."

Prof. Querulix

"What they call ‘public opinion’ is media opinion: an opinion created by education and the media."

José Luis Sampedro