Quotes
Glenn Greenwald: Establishment journalists and media stars are not on the outside of the establishment, they are members of the establishment. They work for the largest corporations. They live in Washington. Socio-economically, their colleagues and partners and family members are people within the government, within the establishment. And what they want to do is to protect and defend the establishment, more than anything else. To protect the idea that the establishment is functioning properly. And so, their interest is to minimize the public anger and the public rage.
Caitlin Johnstone: Why do mainstream media reporters within ostensibly free democracies act just like state media propagandists? Why are they so reliably pro-establishment, all throughout every mainstream outlet? Why do they so consistently marginalize any idea that doesn't fit within the extremely narrow Overton window of acceptable opinion? Why does anyone who inconveniences western establishment power always find themselves on the losing end of a trial by media? Why are they so dependably adversarial toward anything that could be perceived as a flaw in any nation outside the US-centralized power alliance, and so dependably forgiving of the flaws of the nations within it?
Eric Zuesse: The U.S. mainstream 'news' media are propaganda-organs for the U.S. Government. While some American news-media are Democratic Party propagandists, and others are Republican Party propagandists, and therefore all of them eagerly expose lies that are of only a partisan nature, none of them will expose lies that both Parties share.
Edward Herman: Pravda and Izvestia in the former Soviet Union would have been hard-pressed to surpass the American media in their subservience to the official agenda. They have abandoned the notion of objectivity or even the idea of providing a public space where problems are discussed and debated. It's a scandal that reveals the existence of a system of propaganda, not of serious media so essential in a democratic society.
Paul Craig Roberts: The success of print and TV pundits is based on allying with a prominent point of view or interest group and serving it.
Glenn Greenwald: Rush Limbaugh can depict himself as being this insurgent outsider, but he supported the wars of the last eight years. He supported the tax policies that Ronald Reagan essentially instituted as conventional wisdom - that we need to lower taxes, reduce government spending. All of the conventional clichés that the media airs frequently, and doesn't need much time in order to explain, are ones that Rush Limbaugh and the furthest fringes of the right essentially embrace.
Neil Postman: The "news" is only a commodity, which is used to gather an audience that will be sold to advertisers.
Lewis H. Lapham: Essentially Walter Chronkite was a shill for the government. It didn't matter whether it was Democratic or Republican. He was for the status quo.
R. Palme Dutt: Lenin showed that imperialism is moribund capitalism, that imperialism is the eve of the Lenin on imperialism socialist revolution of the proletariat. In his work on the foundations of Leninism, Stalin points out that Marx and Engels lived and fought at a time when imperialism had not yet developed, in a period of the preparation of the proletariat for revolution, whereas Lenin's revolutionary activity was effected within the period of developed imperialism, the period of the unfolding proletarian revolution. Leninism is the further development of Marxism under new conditions, under the conditions of the epoch of imperialism and proletarian revolutions. It follows, therefore, that at this time one cannot be a Marxist without being a Leninist. It also follows that to deny the Leninist theory of imperialism is to break away entirely from Marxism. It is clear from this that any distortion or mistake in the theory of imperialism inevitably means a break with revolutionary Marxism-Leninism.
R. Palme Dutt: In essence, Marxism and Marxist notions need to evolve with the development of historical conditions. It is on the basis of Marxist methodology that Marxism evolves. In the conditions of the last stage of capitalism, imperialism, Marxism becomes Marxism-Leninism. Refuting Leninism is tantamount to decrying Marxism, as anti-Leninism is rendered a form of anti-Marxism. Marxism to- day cannot be understood without Lenin's contribution to Marxism.
Neil Postman: TV is not what happened. It is what some man or woman who has been labeled a journalist or correspondent thinks is worth reporting.
Chris Hedges: Television journalism is largely a farce. Celebrity reporters, masquerading as journalists, make millions a year and give a platform to the powerful and the famous so they can spin, equivocate, and lie. ... It is not one or two reporters or television hosts who are corrupt. The media institutions are corrupt. Many media workers, especially those based in Washington, work shamelessly for our elites. ... The well-paid television pundits and news celebrities, the economists and the banking and financial sector leaders, see the world from inside the comfort of the corporate box. They are loyal to the corporate state. They cling to the corporation and the corporate structure. It is known. It is safe. It is paternal. It is the system.
R. Palme Dutt: The British ruling class are not fighting to liberate the people of Europe from fascism and reaction. They have always been, for a century and a-half, the main stranglers of every popular revolution in every country. The war aims of Churchill, for which the British workers; are asked to die, are the war aims of British imperialism; to protect and maintain the domination of the British Empire over a-quarter of the world; to smash the rival German imperialism and inflict a new super-Versailles; to maintain the reactionary interests of capitalist class rule against the world Socialist Revolution. There is nothing they fear more than a real popular revolution in Europe, which they know would lead to the victory of Socialism.
Gore Vidal: Unfortunately, we get only disinformation from the New York Times and other official places. Americans have no idea of the extent of their government's mischief.
Michel Chossudovsky: Media disinformation has become institutionalized. The lies and fabrications have become increasingly blatant when compared to the 1970s. The US media has become the mouthpiece of US foreign policy. Disinformation is routinely "planted" by CIA operatives in the newsroom of major dailies, magazines and TV channels.
Charlie Robinson: In America, we grew up thinking that the people that we see on the nightly news are journalists. But, there is no journalism happening there, only script reading. That is understood by anyone with a sliver of common sense, and the objectivity to realize that their newsperson is basically an actor.
Lewis H. Lapham: The major news media that serve at the pleasure of a commercial oligarchy that pays them, and pays them handsomely, for their pretense of speaking truth to power. The prominent figures in our contemporary Washington press corps regard themselves as government functionaries, enabling and codependent.
Andrew Gavin Marshall: The mainstream media is a conglomerate of collective corporate thought, designed to make you ignorant and unaware of the realities of the world, of the important issues, and to hide in the shadows the sacredly guarded truths of power. Our mainstream media - the large newspapers, radio and TV news stations - are dominated by billion dollar corporations, whose boards of directors reflect the 'who's who' of the corporate, political, and financial elite, with former government officials, industrialists, and bankers controlling the dispersal of information and the perspectives we are given.
John Pilger: Propaganda is most effective when our consent is engineered by those with a fine education - Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Columbia - and with careers on the BBC, the Guardian, the New York Times, the Washington Post.
John Stauber: The national broadcast media have become a propaganda arm of the Pentagon.
Jon Rappoport: Images sent over thousands of miles, well-lit anchors who seem alert to everything of importance taking place in our world, field reporters in far-flung places who pop up and respond instantly to the anchors and deliver close-up accounts of vital events. And the same important faces of government leaders who, day after day, are struggling to improve our destiny against great odds, against intransigent enemies of progress. All this is delivered to us in the space of a few minutes, each night, like clockwork. The television news presents that little show of magic which the people sorely need. The need never dies. It's eternal. The television anchors can be obvious oafs, hucksters, cheap con artists. They can twist the truth, burn it, hide it, step on it, reverse it; it doesn't matter.
Michael Krieger: The "Russiagate" scam-artist pundits and fake journalists have no shame and many of them already achieved fame and fortune. Moreover, just like the banker crooks of the financial crisis era and the Iraq war WMD peddlers that came before them, these people are more likely to be promoted than face any life-altering consequences for the society damaging lies they spread.
Lenin: There can be no real and effective "freedom" in a society based on the power of money, in a society in which the masses of working people live in poverty and the handful of rich live like parasites.
Friedrich Engels: Nothing is eternal but eternally changing, eternally moving matter and the laws according to which it moves and changes.
Michael Parenti: Official Washington cannot tell the American people that the real purpose of its gargantuan military expenditures and belligerent interventions is to make the world safe for General Motors, General Electric, General Dynamics, and all the other generals.
Helen Keller: The few own the many because they possess the means of livelihood of all ... The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the bankers, the land speculators, and for the exploiters of labor. The majority of mankind are working people. So long as their fair demands - the ownership and control of their livelihoods - are set at naught, we can have neither men's rights nor women's rights. The majority of mankind is ground down by industrial oppression in order that the small remnant may live in ease.
James Connolly: A revolution will only be achieved when the ordinary people of the world, us, the working class, get up off our knees and take back what is rightfully ours.
James Connolly: In our day and generation there is only one class which can be depended upon for consistent revolutionary action. That class is the working class.
Mark Twain: Those who don't read newspapers are uninformed, those who read newspapers are misinformed.
Edward Herman: The New York Times itself, both as a media institution and the product that is delivered in its name on a daily basis, is built and thrives on structures of disinformation and selective information that constitute Big Lies.
Ulrich Tilgner: With the help of the media, the military determine the public perception and use it for their plans. They manage to stir expectations and spread scenarios and deceptions. In this new kind of war, the PR strategists of the US administration fulfill a similar function as the bomber pilots. The special departments for public relations in the Pentagon and in the secret services have become combatants in the information war. The US military specifically uses the lack of transparency in media coverage for their deception maneuvers. The way they spread information, which is then picked up and distributed by newspapers and broadcasters, makes it impossible for readers, listeners or viewers to trace the original source. Thus, the audience will fail to recognize the actual intention of the military.
Michael Parenti: We hear about the occasions when there are differences between the mainstream media and the government. What we don't hear about are the 95 percent of occasions where the mainstream media faithfully propagate disinformation stories which are often planted by the CIA.