quotations about the news media
The power of the press is very great but not so great as the power of suppression.
LORD NORTHCLIFFE
Daily Mail, 1918
I don't give a damn what the media critics say. It's what your readers say. If you haven't got any readers, you're only talking to yourself.
RUPERT MURDOCH
attributed, Good Times, Bad Times
Today's journalism is obsessed with the kinds of things that tend to preoccupy thirteen-year-old boys: sports, sex, crime, and narcissism.
STEVEN STARK
Atlantic Monthly, September 1994
The news isn't there to tell you what happened. It's there to tell you what it wants you to hear or what it thinks you want to hear.
JOSS WHEDON
Astonishing X-Men: Volume 2
For a politician to complain about the press is like a ship's captain complaining about the sea.
ENOCH POWELL
The Guardian, December 1984
Bad news drives out good news. The irrational is more controversial than the rational. Concurrence can no longer compete with dissent. One minute of Eldridge Cleaver is worth ten minutes of Roy Wilkins. The labor crises settled at the negotiating table is nothing compared to the confrontation that results in a strike ... normality has become the nemesis of network news.
SPIRO AGNEW
speech the Midwest Republican Regional Conference in Des Moines, Iowa, November 13, 1969
It is better to be making the news than taking it; to be an actor rather than a critic.
WINSTON CHURCHILL
The Story of the Malakand Field Force
Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers another.
G. K. CHESTERTON
All Things Considered
Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
letter to John Norvell, June 11, 1807
The press is owned by an oligarchic corporate elite which makes sure that any critique of them is never broadcast over the airwaves.
CHRIS HEDGES
"The Pathology of the Super-Rich"
Let the greatest part of the news thou hearest be the least part of what thou believest, lest the greatest part of what thou believest to be the least part of what is true.
FRANCIS QUARLES
Enchiridion Institutions
Believe it or not, I think the downfall of our press today was the show 60 Minutes. Up until it came along, news was expected to lose money, in order to bring the people fair reporting and the truth. But when 60 Minutes became the top-rated program on television, the light went on. The corporate honchos said, "Wait a minute, you mean if we entertain with the news, we can make money?" It was the realization that, if packaged the correct way, the news could make you big bucks. No longer was it a matter of scooping somebody else on a story, but whether 20/20's ratings this week were better than Dateline's.
JESSE VENTURA
Don't Start the Revolution Without Me!
News is like fish, it should be made use of before it becomes stale.
ANNIE E. LANCASTER
attributed, Day's Collacon
News travels fast in places where nothing much ever happens.
CHARLES BUKOWSKI
Ham on Rye
The proper presentation of the news bears about the same relation to the whole field of happenings that a painting does to a photograph. The photograph might give the more accurate presentation of details, but in doing so it might sacrifice the opportunity the more clearly to delineate character.
CALVIN COOLIDGE
speech, January 17, 1925
Whatever a patron desires to get published is advertising; whatever he wants to keep out of the paper is news.
ANONYMOUS
The Fourth Estate: A Newspaper for the Makers of Newspapers
The hasty divulgers of news, often give themselves the trouble of contradicting it.
HENRY FIELDING
attributed, Day's Collacon
There wasn't a single item of importance [in the newspaper]. A tower of illusion, all of it, made of illusory bricks and full of holes.
KOBO ABE
The Woman in the Dunes
All the papers that matter live off their advertisements, and the advertisers exercise an indirect censorship over news.
GEORGE ORWELL
Why I Write
Nobody likes the man who brings bad news.
SOPHOCLES
Antigone