The Media Quotes

“We are all the judges and the judged, victims of the casual malice and fantasy of others, and ready sources of fantasy and malice in our turn. And if we are sometimes accused of sins of which we are innocent, are there not also other sins of which we are guilty and of which the world knows nothing?”
― Iris Murdoch, Nuns and Soldiers

“Because instant and credible information has to be given, it becomes necessary to resort to guesswork, rumors and suppositions to fill in the voids, and none of them will ever be rectified, they will stay on in the readers' memory. How many hasty, immature, superficial and misleading judgments are expressed every day, confusing readers, without any verification. The press can both simulate public opinion and miseducate it. Thus we may see terrorists heroized, or secret matters, pertaining to one's nation's defense, publicly revealed, or we may witness shameless intrusion on the privacy of well-known people under the slogan: "everyone is entitled to know everything." But this is a false slogan, characteristic of a false era: people also have the right not to know, and it is a much more valuable one. The right not to have their divine souls stuffed with gossip, nonsense, vain talk. A person who works and leads a meaningful life does not need this excessive burdening flow of information.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

“The death of a billionaire is worth more to the media than the lives of a billion poor people.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“A celebrity is an object that the media manufactures today, just so they have a subject tomorrow.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“In politics not only are leaders lacking, but the independence of spirit and the sense of justice of the citizen have to a great extent declined. The democratic, parliamentarian regime, which is based on such independence, has in many places been shaken, dictatorships have sprung up and are tolerated, because men’s sense of the dignity and the rights of the individual is no longer strong enough. In two weeks the sheep-like masses can be worked up by the newspapers into such a state of excited fury that the men are prepared to put on uniform and kill and be killed, for the sake of the worthless aims of a few interested parties.”
― Albert Einstein, The World As I See It

“The American press is a shame and a reproach to a civilized people. When a man is too lazy to work and too cowardly to steal, he becomes an editor and manufactures public opinion.”
― William T. Sherman

“Back then: to be regarded as well-known, one had to be great. Today: to be regarded as great, one has to be well-known.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Interviews were invented to make journalism less passive. Instead of waiting for something to happen, journalists ask someone what should or could happen.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana, N for Nigger: Aphorisms for Grown Children and Childish Grown-ups

“But even when Facebook isn't deliberately exploiting its users, it is exploiting its users—its business model requires it. Even if you distance yourself from Facebook, you still live in the world that Facebook is shaping. Facebook, using our native narcissism and our desire to connect with other people, captured our attention and our behavioral data; it used this attention and data to manipulate our behavior, to the point that nearly half of America began relying on Facebook for news. Then, with the media both reliant on Facebook as a way of reaching readers and powerless against the platform's ability to suck up digital advertising revenue—it was like a paperboy who pocketed all the subscription money—Facebook bent the media's economic model to match its own practices: publications needed to capture attention quickly and consistently trigger high emotional responses to be seen at all. The result, in 2016, was an unending stream of Trump stories, both from the mainstream news and from the fringe outlets that were buoyed by Facebook's algorithm. What began as a way for Zuckerberg to harness collegiate misogyny and self-interest has become the fuel for our whole contemporary nightmare, for a world that fundamentally and systematically misrepresents human needs.”
― Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion

“One of the cardinal rules of journalism: Once you have cabled a story you must stick by it and back it up, unless something completely overwhelming proves you to have been wrong. In such a case, just drop the matter.”
― Wynant Davis Hubbard, Fiasco in Ethiopia

“A rumor is usually a lie that the media can legally profit from.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Media is Munchausen by proxy.”
― Jennifer Sodini

“A church service starts and ends with a prayer. A magazine starts and ends with an advert.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“The media is socially liberal, economically conservative, and always pro-war.”
― James Rozoff

“Most nobodies are somebodies and most somebodies are nobodies somewhere.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“When attempting to turn things around for a particularly disliked or controversial client, Sitrick was fond of saying, "We need to find a lead steer!" The media, like any group of animals, gallops in a herd. It takes just one steer to start a stampede.”
― Ryan Holiday, Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator

“All truly famous people wish fame had a switch.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“When reading a book, you are sold what some writer thought. When reading a newspaper, you are sold what someone did, and, what some advertiser made.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Speech itself, inevitable and unrelenting, is the wind. It can dance like a zephyr.
It can roar shriek or wail. But it can't be stopped.
Everything we hate about the media today was present at its creation: its corrupt or craven practitioners, its easy manipulation by the powerful, its capacity for propagating lies, its penchant for amplifying rage.
Also present was everything we admire -- and require -- from the media: factual information, penetrating analysis, probing investigation, truth spoken to power.
Same as it ever was.”
― Brooke Gladstone, The Influencing Machine: Brooke Gladstone On The Media

“Capitalism has turned entertainment into a trap with which advertisers attempt to catch our attention in order to tempt us to release our money into their possession.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“The graver evils of the capitalist system all arise from its uneven distribution of power. The possessors of capital wield an influence quite out of proportion to their numbers or their services to the community. They control almost the whole of education and the press; they decide what the average man shall know or not know”
― Bertrand Russell, The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism by Bertrand Russell