“To the press alone,
chequered as it is with abuses, the world is indebted for all the triumphs which
have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression”
-- James
Madison |  |
“The
media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent
guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control
the minds of the masses.”
-- Malcolm X
If
you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being
oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.
-- Malcolm
X
 |
Media is the nervous system
of our culture.
-- Gary
Malkin |
“All
media exist to invest our lives with artificial perceptions and arbitrary values”
-- Marshall McLuhan quotes
“The
media tends to report rumors, speculations, and projections as facts... How does
the media do this? By quoting some "expert"... you can always find some expert
who will say something hopelessly hopeless about anything.”
-- Peter McWilliams
*
By the end of the millenium five men controlled the world's media. And the people
rejoiced, because their TVs told them to.
-- Michael
Moore | 
|
 | The
quality of democracy and the quality of journalism are deeply entwined.
--
Bill Moyers An
unconscious people, an indoctrinated people, a people fed only partisan information
and opinion that confirm their own bias, a people made morbidly obese in mind
and spirit by the junk food of propaganda is less inclined to put up a fight,
ask questions and be skeptical. And just as a democracy can die of too many lies,
that kind of orthodoxy can kill us, too.
-- Bill
Moyers |
“I
believe democracy requires a ‘sacred contract’ between journalists and those who
put their trust in us to tell them what we can about how the world really works.”
-- Bill Moyers
 |
There is a
cultural factor promoting violence which nowadays undoubtedly is highly effective
is the mass media. And particularly everything that enters our minds through pictorial
media.
-- Alva Myrdal
|
"The
people will believe what the media tells them they believe."
-- George Orwell
Once
you inject fear into a society of people, they become more and more afraid because
they don’t cross over the neighbourhoods and the only information they get about
other people is through the media.
-- Sister
Helen Prejean |
|
"Put
it before them briefly so they will read it, clearly so they will appreciate it,
picturesquely so they will remember it and, above all, accurately so they will
be guided by its light."
-- Joseph Pulitzer
"The
best antidote to political attacks is to demonstrate our commitment to journalism,
to public broadcasting and to democratic values."
-- Raul Ramirez
 | “If
in other lands the press and books and literature of all kinds are censored, we
must redouble our efforts here to keep them free”
-- Franklin
D. Roosevelt |
The
bigger the information media, the less courage and freedom they allow. Bigness
means weakness.
-- Eric Sevareid
"The
media is not just the message. The media is a massage. We're constantly being
stroked, manipulated, adjusted, realigned, and manoeuvered."
-- Joey Skaggs
| Newspapers
are unable, seemingly, to discriminate between a bicycle accident and the collapse
of civilisation.
-- George
Bernard Shaw | 
|
| |
"The free press is the mother
of all our liberties and of our progress under liberty."
-- Adlai
Stevenson |
 | *
I can't tell you how many times we'll run into a journalist and go, "Boy that's…I
wish we could be saying that. That's exactly the way we see it and that's exactly
the way we'd like to be saying that." And I always think, "Well, why don't you?"
-- Jon Stewart
|
| 
|
The
idea of a liberal media bias is simply a myth. If only it were true, we might
have a more humane, open-minded, and ultimately effective public debate on the
issues facing the country.
-- Barbra Streisand
|
Free
Press / Media Reform Quotes
