Quotes About Media

Said New York Post columnist William V. Shannon: "There is a growing tendency on the part of Americans to 'consume' political figures in much the same sense we consume entertainment personalities on television and in the movies.

A managed democracy is a wonderful thing... for the managers... and its greatest strength is a 'free press' when 'free' is defined as 'responsible' and the managers define what is 'irresponsible'.

Limiting the freedom of news 'just a little bit' is in the same category with the classic example 'a little bit pregnant.

Peace" is a condition in which no civilian pays any attention to military casualties which do not achieve page-one, lead-story prominence—unless that civilian is a close relative of one of the casualties.

Television leaves no external scars.

Manuel, on some subjects I don't trust even myself. Limiting the freedom of news 'just a little bit' is in the same category with the classic example 'a little bit pregnant.' We are not yet free nor will we be as long as anyone—even our ally Mike—controls our news. Someday I hope to own a newspaper independent of any source or channel. I would happily set print by hand, like Benjamin Franklin.

Peace" is a condition in which no civilian pays any attention to military casualties which do not achieve page-one, lead-story prominence

TIME Magazine probably publishes many facts, but since its founding in the early 1920's I have been on the spot eight or nine times when something that wound up as a news story in TIME happened. Not once—not once—did the TIME Magazine story match what I saw and heard.

In almost all other professions a man must be able to observe carefully and report accurately what he has seen. Those qualifications are unnecessary for journalists, however, since their job is to write sensational stories that sell newspapers.

The Citadel has a vigorous and versatile propaganda department in the United States called the Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal or CSICOP for short. You will not be surprised to learn that Martin Gardner and Prof. Bunge are among its spokesmen. CSICOPs method of scientific investigation generally is to wage a campaign of vilification, in the media, against any researcher whose ideas they don't like.

Since the publication of Packard's The Hidden Persuaders, McLuhan's The Mechanical Bride, and similar books, it has been realized that techniques of inducing mass hallucination or something like mass hallucination are well known to advertisers.

When the San Francisco Chronicle first computerized they had similar problems. I remember one story in which the Chief of Police, denouncing drugs, rambled off into a sentence about the thrill of meeting Mickey Mouse and Goofy. I assume that line came from another story but it made the Chief sound as if he had gotten into some weird chemicals himself.)

READING NEWS HEADLINES CAUSES BRAIN TO SHRINK: SCIENTISTS FIND HAIKU ALSO RISKY

There is no government, no industrial-military complex, no economic system, no mass media that can ever reduce us to puppets and robots as thoroughly as the biological and environmental dictatorships have. — F.M. Esfandiary, Upwingers

She began to think of TVland as, not just a condensed electronic image or ghost of Reality, but a mask that had undergone considerable editing and rewriting to suit those in charge of Reality Selection for the whole society in which the TV existed. She realized that what the TV showed did not represent a simple Xerox of the Real World but a complicated social "game" — or tacit conspiracy — to pretend a certain set of programs contained all of the Real World.

The Burbank Studios in beautiful downtown Burbank.

I went to bed at twenty minutes after one that night, and still the networks were on the air, rehashing the landing, replaying the interviews, offering taped "live" coverage of something that was no more alive than a nightmare.

The press still called, though with less frequency, and I avoided them. I listened to talk radio and gained weight, as if I felt a hunger that I couldn't satisfy.

The news coverage of the Indian Ocean tsunami indicates how the South China Sea may appear to the world through the media's distorting mirror.

In the future, the great division will be between those who have trained themselves to handle these complexities and those who are overwhelmed by them—those who can acquire skills and discipline their minds and those who are irrevocably distracted by all the media around them and can never focus enough to learn.

Television has greater power over the lives of most Americans than any educational system, government, or church.

The thing is with the media, I have a love-hate relationship with [it]. [Journalists] are only doing their jobs and you can't get your own way all the time.

Pro Publica distorts the relationship between organizations and their consultants.

There is one question that I don't think Gary Condit can answer, and that I think is why we all aimed at Gary Condit, besides the fact that he has a relationship.