Press Quotes – Reflections on the Role of the Press

"Swine flu was the first epidemic that was not spread by viruses, but by journalists. It quickly became clear that it was far less dangerous than our old winter flu - that most people were therefore unsuspecting and stupidly participating in the scaremongering by the pharmaceutical industry. Even the most responsible journalists usually lack a sense of proportion. We should keep this in mind: The great killers of humanity are hunger, malaria, AIDS, contaminated drinking water and road traffic."

Wolf Dietrich Schneider

"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

"There is no concept more generally cherished by publishers than that of the Undeserving Poor."

A. J. Liebling

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

A. J. Liebling

"A fact-checking agency often serves as an instrument of censorship. The reason someone finances such an agency is to review and control certain press products and other media. The main motivation behind it is to instill in the public what is true or false, and to portray others' statements as questionable, obscure, or unreliable. This serves to morally polarize the political discourse by granting a seal of approval to some statements and not to others.

One can truly recognize these institutions as part of a repressive discourse environment only when one recognizes this moralism. The various methods by which political discussions are redirected into a negotiation about the truth, which one is now either allowed to acknowledge, or else one is a dissenter, a conspiracy theorist, a denier of something."

Michael Andrick

"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

"It has long been apparent that many people in the media don't believe you're competent to make your own decisions."

Harry Edson Browne

"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

"Modern business must have its finger continuously on the public pulse. It must understand the changes in the public mind and be prepared to interpret itself fairly and eloquently to changing opinion."

Edward Bernays

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

Elon Musk

"The hero is known for achievements; the celebrity for well-knowns. The hero reveals the possibilities of human nature. The celebrity reveals the possibilities of the press and media. Celebrities are people who make news, but heroes are people who make history. Time makes heroes but dissolves celebrities."

Daniel J. Boorstin

"Useless knowledge can be made directly contributory to a force of sound and disinterested public opinion."

Albert Jay Nock

"The Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press, or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms."

Samuel Adams

"Nietzsche said the newspaper had replaced the prayer in the life of the modern bourgeois , meaning that the busy, the cheap, the ephemeral, had usurped all that remained of the eternal in his daily life."

Allan Bloom

"When society as a whole is in the grip of anxiety and the accompanying images of illness and death, those images in themselves become a causal factor."

Mattias Desmet

"Why should freedom of speech and freedom of press be allowed? Why should a government which is doing what it believes to be right allow itself to be criticized? It would not allow opposition by lethal weapons. Ideas are much more fatal things than guns. Why should any man be allowed to buy a printing press and disseminate pernicious opinions calculated to embarrass the government?"

Vladimir Lenin

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

Walter Lippmann