Press Quotes – Reflections on the Role of the Press

"One of the intentions of corporate-controlled media is to instill in people a sense of disempowerment, of immobilization and paralysis. Its outcome is to turn you into good consumers. It is to keep people isolated, to feel that there is no possibility for social change."

David Barsamian

"The media want to maintain their intimate relation to state power. They want to get leaks, they want to get invited to the press conferences. They want to rub shoulders with the Secretary of State, all that kind of business. To do that, you’ve got to play the game, and playing the game means telling their lies, serving as their disinformation apparatus."

Noam Chomsky

"Do not fear the enemy, for your enemy can only take your life. It is far better that you fear the media, for they will steal your HONOR. That awful power, the public opinion of a nation, is created in America by a horde of ignorant, self-complacent simpletons who failed at ditching and shoemaking and fetched up in journalism on their way to the poorhouse."

Mark Twain

"The press is our chief ideological weapon"

Nikita Khrushchev

"Following the same course that virtually every other major industry has in the last two decades, a relentless series of mergers and corporate takeovers has consolidated control of the media into the hands of a few corporate behemoths. The result has been that an increasingly authoritarian agenda has been sold to the American people by a massive, multi-tentacled media machine that has become, for all intents and purposes, a propaganda organ of the state."

David McGowan

"A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself."

Joseph Pulitzer

"Perhaps the most obvious political effect of controlled news is the advantage it gives powerful people in getting their issues on the political agenda and defining those issues in ways likely to influence their resolution."

W. Lance Bennett

"The commercial press, in another of its brazen hypocritical proclamations, points with pride to the fact that it is free because it upholds a free system in which there are two political parties. But there is probably not one member of the A.N.P.A. [American Newspaper Publishers Association] who does not know that the Republican and Democratic parties both feed out of the same bag provided by the monied system, and that the same persons frequently subscribe funds to both major parties … They know this very well, and they also know very well that the press has never given honest news coverage to the formation, platform and campaign of any third party which was independent enough not to feed on the same money. George Seldes, 1943"

George Seldes

"The Pope’s confessor, an ordinary priest, must be a Jesuit: he must visit the Vatican once a week at a fixed time, and he alone may absolve the Pope of his sins."

Nino Lo Bello

"In just two sentences, Orwell reveals the institutional structure of the media. He asks: Why is there such censorship? It is partly because the press is owned by wealthy people who want only certain topics to reach the public. And secondly, Orwell says, everyone who goes through the elite education system, attending the "right" schools, learns that there are certain things you must not say and certain thoughts you must not think. This is the role elite institutions play in socialization. Those who do not conform are usually expelled. These two sentences basically say it all."

George Orwell

"Politicians and journalists. These are both categories of people to be approached with the utmost caution: for both range from near-statesmen to near-criminals. And the average remains average."

Helmut Schmidt

"Too many people today allow themselves such freedom to ask things and condemn a person. Whatever you answer: ‘Yes, I didn't, maybe, I don't know, I'm thinking,’ they will abuse it. The media has become, I have no word how to describe it. It spreads fear and panic among people, and I don’t want to participate in that rift. I feel that everyone is hostile. I don’t want to give them a reason to write some things about me. Now what I told you, one of your editors can take and make a scandal out of it. I don't want to take part in any storm that is happening right now."

Novak Djokovic

"There is less and less free journalism and information. It is only about spreading propaganda that serves an elite"

Novak Djokovic

"Wir leben in einem Zeitalter der Massenverblödung, besonders der medialen Massenverblödung.[....] Wenn Sie sich einmal anschauen, wie einseitig die hiesigen Medien, von TAZ bis Welt, über die Ereignisse in der Ukraine berichten, dann kann man wirklich von einer Desinformation im großen Stil berichten, flankiert von den technischen Möglichkeiten des digitalen Zeitalters, dann kann man nur feststellen, die Globalisierung hat in der Medienwelt zu einer betrüblichen Provinzialisierung geführt."

Peter Scholl-Latour

"Television, the most powerful means of human interaction, is today in the hands of those utterly irresponsible regarding their role in society."

Sergei Petrowitsch Kapiza

"Soon the public will be unable to argue or think for themselves. They will only be able to parrot the information they received in last night's news."

Zbigniew Brzezinski

"We must be especially careful in the investigations, because Mr. Reichelt is truly the last and only journalist in Germany who still bravely stands up against the new authoritarian state, the GDR"

Mathias Döpfner

"The press does not tell us what to think, it tells us what to think about."

Walter Lippmann