Americans are too broadly under-informed to digest nuggets of information that seem to contradict what they know of the world ... Instead, news channels prefer to feed Americans a constant stream of simplified information, all of which fits what they already know. That way they don’t have to devote more air time or newsprint space to explanations or further investigations. Tom Fenton
For the media owners, allegations of a liberal bias make it easier for them to impose the conservative bias they prefer. For the pseudo-liberals who work in the media system, confessing to a liberal bias is far more comfortable than admitting that they’ve sold out their beliefs for a nice salary. It’s only because the mainstream media is so conservative that all these right-wing pundits can make accusations of liberal bias without opposition. John K Wilson
There’s a gulf here between the version of the world we are presented with and the actual world people are living in. Andy Thomas, lecture Alternative View III conference, ‘The Age of Media Smugness’
The mainstream media tries to lead us down certain avenues that don’t necessarily reflect the reality. ibid.
Radio 4 is one of the smuggest radio stations out. ibid.
The media is effectively censored. ibid.
That interminable smugness that says, We know we’re right. ibid.
Codex Alimentarius ... There are attempts to bring in legislation at the moment that will massively restrict the availability of things like high dose vitamins. ibid.
Anything slightly fringe, anything slightly strange, is to be dismissed with smugness and condescension. ibid.
An underlying theme that comes up again and again and again is this problem with mainstream media. That fact that the mainstream media is controlled by a tiny handful of individuals who have massive power. Richard D Hall, Richplanet TV 2013 tour Southampton with Dr Judy Wood
Without the control of the media, false-flag attacks can’t happen … Intelligence agencies are involved in controlling the media. Richard D Hall, Richplanet: Western Super Mare 23rd June 2011
David Shayler in his book – he exposed certain MI6 agents working at the The Sunday Telegraph. ibid.
The Phony Bone of Contention. ibid.
Dan Sherman testimony: Anti-Gravity secret space programme ... Edgar Fouche & Stan Deyo whistleblowers: Anti-Gravity secret space programme … Fouche disclosed information about a craft – secret craft – called the TR-3B. ibid.
Gary McKinnon: ‘I found a list of officers’ names,’ he says, ‘under the heading “Non-Terrestrial Officers” … I found a list of “fleet-to-fleet transfers”, and a list of ship names.’ ibid.
Throughout the world, including parts of the UK, since at least 1954, animals known to be in perfect physical health are found dead with very peculiar injuries on and inside their bodies. ibid.
‘We falsely think of our country as a democracy when it has evolved into a media-ocracy. We are a media that is supposed to check political abuse; is part of the political abuse.’ Orwell Rolls in His Grave, Danny Schechter, 2003
‘The most powerful special interest in Washington today is the media.’ ibid. Charles Lewis, former 60 minutes producer
Had it become easier to purposely manipulate the news? ibid.
‘The top 1% that control 90% of the wealth have two major political parties doing their bidding for them. And the other 99% have no political party on the ballot representing them.’ ibid. Michael Moore
‘I know from experience that even mentioning income distribution leads to angry accusations of class warfare ... Why has the response to rising inequality been a drive to reduce taxes on the rich?’ ibid. Paul Krugman
Has the mainstream media become an anti-democratic force in America? ibid.
A CNN/Gallup poll conducted in March 2003 found that 51% of the American people thought Saddam Hussein was personally responsible for the September 11th attack. ibid.
Five months before the 2000 election Governor Jeb Bush moved to purge 57,000 people from the voting rolls, supposedly ex-felons. ibid.
CBS News killed the story on the basis of a denial by Governor Jeb Bush who was the target of the allegations. ibid.
Starting with Ronald Reagan, the holy grail of deregulation has been sold to the public. But the news media has largely ignored its disastrous results. ibid.
The press ignored or glossed over serious questions about George Bush. From repeated allegations that he had gone AWOL to insider trading. ibid.
‘We know what to do with someone caught misappropriating funds, but when confronted with evidence of a systematic attempt to undermine the political system itself, we recoil in a general failure of imagination and nerve.’ ibid. Gary Sick, author The October Surprise
Under Reagan in 1987 the fairness doctrine was eliminated. ibid.
The future freedom of the internet is in doubt. ibid.
Whoever controls the media, controls the mind. Jim Morrison
I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time – when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness ...
The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance. Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
The biases the media has are much bigger than conservative or liberal. They’re about getting ratings, about making money, about doing stories that are easy to cover. Al Franken
The marriage of reason and nightmare that dominated the 20th century has given birth to an ever more ambiguous world. Across the communications landscape move the spectres of sinister technologies and the dreams that money can buy. Thermonuclear weapons systems and soft-drink commercials coexist in an overlit realm ruled by advertising and pseudo-events, science and pornography. Over our lives preside the great twin leitmotifs of the 20th century – sex and paranoia. J G Ballard
The media insists on taking what someone didn’t mean to say as being far closer to the truth than what they did. Alain de Botton
There is a huge trapdoor waiting to open under anyone who is critical of so-called ‘popular culture’ or (to redefine this subject) anyone who is uneasy about the systematic, massified cretinization of the major media. If you denounce the excess coverage, you are yourself adding to the excess. If you show even a slight knowledge of the topic, you betray an interest in something that you wish to denounce as unimportant or irrelevant. Some writers try to have this both ways, by making their columns both ‘relevant’ and ‘contemporary’ while still manifesting their self-evident superiority. Thus – I paraphrase only slightly – ‘Even as we all obsess about Paris Hilton, the people of Darfur continue to die’. A pundit like (say) Bob Herbert would be utterly lost if he could not pull off such an apparently pleasing and brilliant irony. Christopher Hitchens
What the mass media offers is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, and replaced by a new dish. W H Auden
I never, ever have seen media this way. It’s almost indescribable. Making up stories, refusing to run real stories. It’s making themselves look like utter fools. There’s no journalism, there is no media. There’s pure, full-fledged advocacy here. Rush Limbaugh
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
For much of my lifetime the American media has been tightly controlled by a handful of corporations whose main task since 1945 was to terrify Americans into believing the Russians were coming and so we needed more missiles and nuclear warheads and submarines. They have had decades to create a false reality. Gore Vidal, speech World Political Forum, Venice, cited: Gore Vidal: United States of Amnesia