Press Quotes – Reflections on the Role of the Press

"It is the absolute right of the State to supervise the formation of public opinion."

Joseph Goebbels

"Not every item of news should be published. Rather must those who control news policies endeavor to make every item of news serve a certain purpose."

Joseph Goebbels

"Keep in mind, the news media are not independent; they are a sort of bulletin board and public relations firm for the ruling class-the people who run things. Those who decide what news you will or will not hear are paid by, and tolerated purely at the whim of, those who hold economic power. If the parent corporation doesn't want you to know something, it won't be on the news. Period. Or, at the very least, it will be slanted to suit them, and then rarely followed up."

George Carlin

"The press today is an army with carefully organized weapons, the journalists its officers, the readers its soldiers. The reader neither knows nor is supposed to know the purposes for which he is used and the role he is to play."

Oswald Spengler

"What is truth? For the multitude, that which it continually reads and hears."

Oswald Spengler

"Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half."

Gore Vidal

"When you control opinion, as corporate America controls opinion in the United States by owning the media, you can make the masses believe almost anything you want, and guide them as you please."

Gore Vidal

"The funny thing about television is that once you start to do it you never get time to watch it."

Kevin Sorbo

"There are so many negative things out there on television and movies right now. Even the daily news, it gets depressing."

Kevin Sorbo

"Thanks to the central bank, most "monetary experts" and "leading macro-economists" can, by putting them on the payroll, be turned into government propagandists "explaining," like alchemists, how stones (paper) can be turned into bread (wealth)."

Hans-Hermann Hoppe

"A democracy survives when its citizens have access to trustworthy and impartial sources of information, when it can discern lies from truth. Take this away and a democracy dies. The fusion of news and entertainment, the rise of a class of celebrity journalists on television who define reporting by their access to the famous and the powerful, the retreat by many readers into the ideological ghettos of the Internet and the ruthless drive by corporations to destroy the traditional news business are leaving us deaf, dumb and blind."

Chris Hedges

"The media propagates a message that corporations want, and there’s a belittling and mocking of the poor and celebration of wealth. A kind of cutthroat, rapacious capitalism is celebrated on reality television shows where you betray and manipulate and push aside your competitors for fleeting fame and money. These are sick values, but they’re disseminated through corporate media in almost every program you watch."

Chris Hedges

"No real journalist makes ? million a year... Those in power fear and dislike real journalists."

Chris Hedges

"He who controls the media controls the minds of the public."

Noam Chomsky

"A single factory, potentially capable of supplying a whole continent with its particular product, cannot afford to wait until the public asks for its product; it must maintain constant touch, through advertising and propaganda, with the vast public in order to assure itself the continuous demand which alone will make its costly plant profitable."

Edward Bernays

"The same people own the media that own the White House that own the Congress that own the oil fields. They all work together to give a false view of the world to the American people."

Gore Vidal

"Of course, it is possible for any citizen with time to spare, and a canny eye, to work out what is actually going on, but for the many there is not time, and the network news is the only news even though it may not be news at all but only a series of flashing fictions."

Gore Vidal

"[M]ost of our daily news is inert, consisting of information that gives us something to talk about but cannot lead to any meaningful action."

Neil Postman