Quotes About Media

I wasn't satisfied with "Stuart Little" on TV, but I didn't expect to be... It is the fixed purpose of television and motion pictures to scrap the author, sink him without a trace, on the theory that he is incompetent, has never read his own stuff, is not responsible for anything he ever wrote, and wouldn't know what to do about it even if he were.

The great thing about television is that if something important happens anywhere in the world, day or night, you can always change the channel.

Sex on television can't hurt you unless you fall off.

Why are sex and violence always linked? I'm afraid they'll blur together in people's minds — sexandviolence — until we can't tell them apart. I expect to hear a newscaster say, "The mob became unruly and the police were forced to resort to sex."

Whenever the extracts from a living writer begin to multiply fast in the papers, without obvious reason, there is a new book or a new edition coming. The extracts are ground-bait.

Every two years the American politics industry fills the airwaves with the most virulent, scurrilous, wall-to-wall character assassination of nearly every political practitioner in the country — and then declares itself puzzled that America has lost trust in its politicians.

Never trust anyone whose television is larger than their bookshelf.

So long as there's a jingle in your head, television isn't free.

The same media people that claim violence on TV doesn't influence people, are perfectly willing to sell you advertising time.

When television came roaring in after the war they did a little school survey asking children which they preferred and why — television or radio. And there was this seven-year-old boy who said he preferred radio "because the pictures were better."

Parents have to realize that there is a stranger in your house. If you came home and you found a strange man… teaching your kids to punch each other, or trying to sell them all kinds of products, you'd kick him right out of the house. But here you are — you come in and the TV is on, and you don't think twice about it.

In general, they refused to eat anything that hadn't danced on TV.

All successful newspapers are ceaselessly querulous and bellicose. They never defend anyone or anything if they can help it; if the job is forced on them, they tackle it by denouncing someone or something else.

These crimes were all motivated by economic jealousy. Either the Negroes in the area were more prosperous than the Whites, or the black workers would not let themselves be exploited thoroughly. In all cases, the principal culprits were never troubled, for the simple reason that they were always incited, encouraged, spurred on, then protected, by the politicians, financiers, and authorities, and above all, by the reactionary press.

Boobs are overrated, if you ask me.

Secretary of State Colin Powell, thank you so much, as always, for joining us this morning.

Don't start an argument with somebody who has a microphone when you don't. They'll make you look like chopped liver.

New York Times founder Henry Raymond started his newspaper, "with the goal of reforming government, not belittling it.

Fighting newspaper editors for the last word was a losing proposition.

No greater mistake can be made than to assume that newspapers are correct indices of public opinion.

Newspaper accounts must not only be studied, but, occasionally refuted.

John Hay calls the telegraph reporter, "the natural enemy of the scribe.

Jefferson said he only read the advertisements in the newspaper, because it was there he was most likely to find the truth.

The mid-19th century was noted for a partisan, rather than a consensus press, but this partisanship was able to turn out voters consistently.