Quotes About Pseudo-events

Daniel Boorstin in The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America

When in our schools the study of current events (that is, of what is reported in the newspapers) displaces the facts of history, it is inevitable that the standard of knowledge propagated by newspapers and magazines and television networks themselves (that is, whether one is up on what is reported in the newspapers, magazines, and television) overshadows all others. When to be informed is to knowledgeable about pseudo-events, the line between knowledge and ignorance is blurred as never before.

The modern American tourist now fills his experience with pseudo-events. He has come to expect both more strangeness and more familiarity than the world naturally offers. He has come to believe that he can have a lifetime of adventure in two weeks and all the thrills of risking his life without any real risk at all.

Indeed, social activism, progressive groupthink, Democratic Party partisanship, opinion and propaganda passed off as news, the staging of pseudo-events, self-censorship, bias by omission, and outright falsehoods are too often substituting for old-fashioned, objective fact gathering and news reporting.