Quotes About Media

Looking back, I still can't believe how unprofessional the news media was. So much spin, so few hard facts. All those digestible sound bites from an army of 'experts' all contradicting one another, all trying to seem more 'shocking' and 'in-depth' than the last one. It was all so confusing, nobody seemed to know what to do.

Fear sells.

We live in an age of reproduction. Most of what makes up our personal picture of the world we have never seen with our own eyes--or rather, we've seen it with our own eyes, but not on the spot: our knowledge comes to us from a distance, we are televiewers, telehearers, teleknowers.

Die Bild-Zeitung ist ein Organ der Niedertracht. Es ist falsch, sie zu lesen. Jemand, der zu dieser Zeitung beiträgt, ist gesellschaftlich absolut inakzeptabel. Es wäre verfehlt, zu einem ihrer Redakteure freundlich oder auch nur höflich zu sein. Man muss so unfreundlich zu ihnen sein, wie es das Gesetz gerade noch zuläßt. Es sind schlechte Menschen, die Falsches tun

Having a thirteen-year-old in the family is like having a general-admission ticket to the movies, radio and TV. You get to understand that the glittering new arts of our civilization are directed to the teen-agers, and by their suffrage they stand or fall.

Actually, without the opportunity to make something go viral, social media would be nothing more than the good old Web 1.0.

As already noted, the only legitimate way for a PR representative to pay media would be if you purchase content that is clearly marked as paid or sponsored.

At first glance, it might seem as though the death of the press release was slightly exaggerated. After all, press releases are still in circulation.

At first glance, total transparency, fast communication, and the unrestricted use of media presuppose a fertile ground for manipulation, which may be one reason the world is becoming so cautious. But transparency doesn`t have that much to do directly and specifically with manipulation.

By definition, however, PR should be trying to achieve virality for its stories - that's one of its goals.

First of all, the word newspaper doesn't really exist anymore, because the first part, news, is gone from it. What's left is only paper.

However, in PR, we communicate messages. Going back to one of my original points, if we produce anything, it's news stories. Regardless of what you call your message, it is news. If it doesn't contain news, then you probably aren't doing a very good job.

My first definition of PR was that PR is the industry of news creation or good news-making.

PR experts need to be brilliantly trained and prepared. That's not just good sense - there are very concrete and powerful reasons for that... We used to have between ten or twelve hours to solve a crisis. Now we don't even have ten minutes!

Regardless of what is done in the wider communications industry, PR will always be linked to content creation. And that content remains textual, first and foremost.

Some PR professionals have been slow to grasp the scope of the paradigm shift brought by the social media revolution in our industry. Many who have grasped it have been slow to keep up-to-date with it.

Ten years ago, in order to be able to spread news, you were supposed to have a major in journalism, have a press card, and be called a journalist. Otherwise, you couldn`t. Now, to spread the news, all you need is a social media account.

The big issue with newspapers is that there is no one to fund them anymore. Nobody can support them and bear the costs in the new environment of public communications revolutionized by online media and even further by social media.

There are other classic PR instruments - press conferences, media meetings, business brunches, business conferences, etc. All those are now replaced by posts on social media, and occasionally still by personal meetings with journalists.

To a great extent, the PR experts need to know the target consumer, their traits, media consumption habits, preferences, everything.

I think a lot of times on TV we see caricatures - that's what's funny.

If the education of our kids comes from radio, television, newspapers - if that's where they get most of their knowledge from, and not from the schools, then the powers that be are definitely in charge, because they own all those outlets.

There is an undercurrent of cultural changes in the Middle East region driven by the globalization of media and the Internet. Smart leaders will anticipate these changes and initiate gradual democratic reforms to avoid political instability and economic problems.

If a politician murders his mother, the first response of the press or of his opponents will likely be not that it was a terrible thing to do, but rather that in a statement made six years before he had gone on record as being opposed to matricide.