The [Trilateral] Commission concluded that the media have become a notable source of national power; this they said is one aspect of an excess of democracy that contributes to the reduction of governmental authority at home and a consequent decline in the influence of democracy abroad. ibid.
It’s a natural expectation that the major media will reflect the perspectives and the interests of established power. ibid.
The media then are following the rules of the game when they contrast the fledgling democracies of South America which are under military and business control with communist Nicaragua. ibid.
In the dependencies we may turn to violence to restore democracy; at home more subtle means are required: the manufacture of consent deceiving the stupid masses with necessary illusions. ibid.
A more credible enemy has been the ‘monolithic and ruthless conspiracy’ that seeks to subvert our noble endeavours. ibid.
Contra aid: during this time the The New York Times and The Washington Post – the two major national newspapers – they ran no less than 85 opinion columns … they were divided over Contra aid, but of the 85 columns, all 85 were critical of the Sandinistas. ibid.
By the late ’60s the population was largely opposed to the [Vietnam] war on moral grounds not on grounds that it was going to fail. By the ’70s with the continued improvement in the cultural climate among the general population those figures went up. By 1982 it was 72% answering you to the war is fundamentally wrong and immoral, not a mistake. ibid.
Over … the last seventy years there’s been a narrowing of media, a sharp narrowing, in England too. Noam Chomsky, In Coversation with Jonathan Freedland March 2013, Youtube 1.41.34
Their societal purpose is to inculcate and defend the economic and social and political agenda of the privileged groups that dominate the domestic society, and they do this in all sorts of ways: they do it by selection of topics, by distribution of concern, by the way they frame issues, by filtering of information, by emphasis and tone, by simple fabrication sometimes but crucially by the bounding of debate to make sure it doesn’t go out of certain limits. Noam Chomsky, lecture 1990, ‘Propaganda Model Language Manipulation and US Foreign Policy’
The media do indeed fulfil a societal … to inculcate and defend the economic and social and political agenda of the privileged groups. Noam Chomsky, lecture 1991, ‘Definition of the Alternatives is the Supreme Instrument of Power or The Lying Elite’s Game’
We must admire the incredible skills the media have in manipulating the population. They’ve managed to convince many that the most passionate anti-racist campaigner of the last forty years, Jeremy Corbyn, is actually pro-racist and anti-Semitic. Noam Chomsky
Expecting Fox News to report real news is about as silly as waiting for George Bush and Dick Cheney to tell the truth ... Americans care, but it’s tough to care when you don’t know what’s going on. That ignorance is what the war-makers count on and what the corporate media delivers. Amy Goodman
The more wonderful the means of communication, the more trivial, tawdry, or depressing its contents seemed to be. Arthur C Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey
Despite the variety and the differences, and however much we proclaim the contrary, what the media produce is neither spontaneous nor completely ‘free’: ‘news’ does not just happen, pictures and ideas do not merely spring from reality into our eyes and minds, truth is not directly available, we do not have unrestrained variety at our disposal.
For like all modes of communication, television, radio, and newspapers observe certain rules and conventions to get things across intelligibly, and it is these, often more than the reality being conveyed, that shape the material delivered by the media. Edward W Said
We have currently a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. Our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse, and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it, and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late. Edward R Murrow
The media. It sounds like a convention of spiritualists. Tom Stoppard, Night and Day, 1978
I’m with you on the free press. It’s the newspapers I can’t stand. ibid.
Comment is free but facts are on expenses. ibid.
Whoever controls the media – the images – controls the culture. Allen Ginsberg
In a media universe where you’re likely to find right-wing conservatives on ABC, Fox, or NPR, the facts don’t matter; only the framing. And in the hands of biased pundits posing as objective journalists, the framing is always going to be the same: pro-military, pro-government, and pro-war. David Potorti
Media manipulation in the US today is more efficient than it was in Nazi Germany, because here we have the pretence that we are getting all the information we want. That misconception prevents people from even looking for the truth. Mark Crispin Miller
All media exist to invest our lives with artificial perceptions and arbitrary values. Marshall McLuhan
The Medium is the Message. Marshall McLuhan
Any medium – be it radio or be it the wheel – tends to create a completely new human environment. Marshall McLuhan, interview not transmitted, BBC 1965
Media criticism does exist in America. But by and large it is not citizen-based criticism designed to make media a better source of information in a democracy. Instead, it is a cynical manipulation of the discourse designed to silence even the mildest dissent from the conservative, militantly pro-corporate dogma that has come to pass for news in an era when ‘reporters’ brag about the size of their American-flag lapel pins. Robert McChesney & John Nichols
The mass media in the United States is the fourth arm of the government. Joyce Riley, Talk Radio host, cited One Nation Under Siege
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
This is the media, an irresponsible media. It will make the criminal look like he’s the victim and make the victim look like he’s the criminal. If you aren’t careful, the media will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing. This is the sort of propaganda tactic that I would call psychological warfare. Malcolm X
Our job is to give people not what they want, but what we decide they ought to have. Richard Salent, former president CBS News
We are going to impose our agenda on the coverage by dealing with issues and subjects that we choose to deal with. Richard M Cohen, senior producer CBS political news
Opinion ... predicated on a raft of distortions, misrepresentations and outright lies presented to the readers and viewers as fact. David Brock, The Republican Noise Machine
Doing terrible things in an organised and systematic way rests on normalisation. There is usually a division of labour in doing and rationalising the unthinkable, with the direct brutalising and killing done by one set of individuals, and other working on improving technology such as weapons or a new kind of napalm. But it is the function of the mainstream media to normalise the unthinkable for the general public. Edward Herman, The Banality of Evil
Monkey see, monkey do. And we emulate what we see. Especially when it’s done in a typical hero and heroine form ... The formula of human behaviour is just a science. Alan Watt, How the Media Controls Your Mind
The left-wing liberal media has always been a close-knit family. Hank Williams, Republican rally, cited Alexandra Pelosi ‘Right America Feeling Wronged’
The people will believe what the media tells them they believe. George Orwell
Politicians and the media have conspired to infantilize, to dumb down, the American public. At heart, politicians don’t believe that Americans can handle complex truths, and the news media, especially television news, basically agrees. Tom Fenton, CBS correspondent