Quotes from Edward S. Herman

Convenient mythologies require neither evidence nor logic.

Concentrate on the victims of enemy powers and forget about the victims of friends.

Advertisers will want, more generally, to avoid programs with serious complexities and disturbing controversies that interfere with the "buying mood." They seek programs that will lightly entertain and thus fit in with the spirit of the primary purpose of program purchases—the dissemination of a selling message.

The steady advance, and cultural power, of marketing and advertising has caused "the displacement of a political public sphere by a depoliticized consumer culture."21

Some argue that the Internet and the new communications technologies are breaking the corporate stranglehold on journalism and opening an unprecedented era of interactive democratic media.

reporting components for "worthy" victims]: Fullness and reiteration of the details of the murder and the damage inflicted on the victim. Stress on indignation, shock, and demands for justice. The search for responsibility at the top.

The anti-Communist control mechanism reaches through the system to exercise a profound influence on the mass media. In normal times as well as in periods of Red scares, issues tend to be framed in terms of a dichotomized world of Communist and anti-Communist powers, with gains and losses allocated to contesting sides, and rooting for "our side" considered an entirely legitimate news practice.

the institutional bias of the private mass media "does not merely protect the corporate system. It robs the public of a chance to understand the real world.