The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing, but newspapers.
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) American Head of State, Lawyer
TV cassette players will take ever-bigger bites out of the regular TV-viewing audience, moviegoers, sports and other event-attending spectators. Cassette players are now the hottest thing on the entertainment scene since popcorn… Movie cassettes are improving the margin of profit for more and more Hollywood hits that don’t at the box office. And of course, there is the home video camera… The only limitation is the viewer’s time. And there, my friends, is the rub of the matter. With only one pair of eyes and a 24-hour day, tape-popping addicts have less and less time for going out to pay to see things.
—Malcolm S. Forbes (1919–1990) American Publisher, Businessperson
There is much to be said in favour of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers wthout government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) American Head of State, Lawyer
Whoever controls the media, the images, controls the culture.
—Allen Ginsberg (1926–97) American Poet, Activist
There was a time when the reader of an unexciting newspaper would remark, ‘How dull is the world today!’ Nowadays he says, ‘What a dull newspaper!’
—Daniel J. Boorstin (1914–2004) American Historian, Academic, Attorney
A free press can of course be good or bad, but, most certainly, without freedom it will never be anything but bad… . Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better, whereas enslavement is a certainty of the worse.
—Albert Camus (1913–60) Algerian-born French Philosopher, Dramatist, Novelist
There is a terrific disadvantage in not having the abrasive quality of the press applied to you daily. Even though we never like it, and even though we wish they didn’t write it, and even though we disapprove, there isn’t any doubt that we could not do the job at all in a free society without a very, very active press.
—John F. Kennedy (1917–63) American Head of State, Journalist
The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western World. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity—much less dissent.
—Gore Vidal (1925–48) American Novelist, Essayist, Journalist, Playwright
The advertisements are the most truthful part of a newspaper.
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) American Head of State, Lawyer
When distant and unfamiliar and complex things are communicated to great masses of people, the truth suffers a considerable and often a radical distortion. The complex is made over into the simple, the hypothetical into the dogmatic, and the relative into an absolute.
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974) American Journalist, Political Commentator
If a theology student in lowa should get up at a PTA luncheon in Sioux City and attack the President’s military policy, my guess is that you would probably find it reported somewhere the next morning in the New York Times. But when 300 Congressmen endorse the President’s policy, the next morning it is apparently not considered news fit to print.
—Spiro Agnew (1918–96) American Politician, Vice President
I can get a better grasp of what is going on in the world from one good Washington dinner party than from all the background information NBC piles on my desk.
—Barbara Walters (1929–2022) American Broadcast Journalist
The futility of everything that comes to us from the media is the inescapable consequence of the absolute inability of that particular stage to remain silent. Music, commercial breaks, news flashes, adverts, news broadcasts, movies, presenters—there is no alternative but to fill the screen; otherwise there would be an irremediable void. That’s why the slightest technical hitch, the slightest slip on the part of the presenter becomes so exciting, for it reveals the depth of the emptiness squinting out at us through this little window.
—Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) French Sociologist, Philosopher
Belief is with them mechanical, voluntary: they believe what they are paid for—they swear to that which turns to account. Do you suppose, that after years spent in this manner, they have any feeling left answering to the difference between truth and falsehood?
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English Essayist
We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer to the New; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
The media network has its idols, but its principal idol is its own style which generates an aura of winning and leaves the rest in darkness. It recognizes neither pity nor pitilessness.
—John Berger (1926–2017) English Art Critic, Novelist
Advertising is the greatest art form of the twentieth century.
—Marshall Mcluhan (1911–80) Canadian Writer, Thinker, Educator
We’ve uncovered some embarrassing ancestors in the not-too-distant past. Some horse thieves, and some people killed on Saturday nights. One of my relatives, unfortunately, was even in the newspaper business.
—Jimmy Carter (b.1924) American Head of State, Military Leader
The real news is bad news.
—Marshall Mcluhan (1911–80) Canadian Writer, Thinker, Educator
The greatest felony in the news business today is to be behind, or to miss a big story. So speed and quantity substitute for thoroughness and quality, for accuracy and context. The pressure to compete, the fear somebody else will make the splash first, creates a frenzied environment in which a blizzard of information is presented and serious questions may not be raised.
—Carl Bernstein (1944–73) American Journalist, Writer
Power without responsibility—the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.
—Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) British Writer, Poet, Novelist, Short Story Author
If Thomas Edison invented electric light today, Dan Rather would report it on CBS News as, “Candle making industry threatened”.
—Newt Gingrich (b.1943) American Politician, Author, Historian
The journalistic vision sharpens to the point of maximum impact every event, every individual and social configuration; but the honing is uniform.
—George Steiner (1929–2020) American Critic, Scholar
Cinema, radio, television, magazines are a school of inattention: people look without seeing, listen in without hearing.
—Robert Bresson (1907–99) French Film Director
Society cannot share a common communication system so long as it is split into warring factions.
—Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) German Poet, Playwright, Theater Personality
All of us who professionally use the mass media are the shapers of society. We can vulgerize that society. We can brutalize it. Or we can help lift it onto a higher level.
—William Bernbach (1911–82) American Advertising Executive
The world is for thousands a freak show; the images flicker past and vanish; the impressions remain flat and unconnected in the soul. Thus they are easily led by the opinions of others, are content to let their impressions be shuffled and rearranged and evaluated differently.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German Poet
It is impossible to read the daily press without being diverted from reality. You are full of enthusiasm for the eternal verities—life is worth living, and then out of sinful curiosity you open a newspaper. You are disillusioned and wrecked.
—Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015) Singaporean Statesman
Th’ newspaper does ivrything f’r us. It runs th’ polis foorce an’ th’ banks, commands th’ milishy, controls th’ligislachure, baptizes th’ young, marries th’ foolish, comforts th’ afflicted, afflicts th’ comfortable, buries th’ dead an’ roasts thim aftherward.
—Finley Peter Dunne (1867–1936) American Author, Writer, Humorist
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