 
|
It seems to me curious, not to say obscene and thoroughly terrifying, that it could occur to an association of human beings drawn together through need and chance and for profit into a company, an organ of journalism, to pry intimately into the lives of an undefended and appallingly damaged group of human beings, an ignorant and helpless rural family, for the purpose of parading the nakedness, disadvantage and humiliation of these lives before another group of human beings, in the name of science, of
-James Agee
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, p. 7
|
|
|
|
If a theology student in lowa should get up at a PTA luncheon in Sioux City and attack the President's military policy, my guess is that you would probably find it reported somewhere the next morning in the New York Times. But when 300 Congressmen endorse the President's policy, the next morning it is apparently not considered news fit to print.
-Spiro T. Agnew
|
|
|
|
Some newspapers are fit only to line the bottom of bird cages.
-Spiro T. Agnew
|
|
|
|
What the mass media offers is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, and replaced by a new dish.
-W. H. Auden
The Dyer's Hand (1962)
|
|
|
|
Reporters thrive on the world's misfortune. For this reason they often take an indecent pleasure in events that dismay the rest of humanity.
-Russell Baker
The Good Times, 1989
|
|
|
|
Power without responsibility -- the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.
-Stanley Baldwin
|
|
|
|
The futility of everything that comes to us from the media is the inescapable consequence of the absolute inability of that particular stage to remain silent. Music, commercial breaks, news flashes, adverts, news broadcasts, movies, presenters -- there is no alternative but to fill the screen; otherwise there would be an irremediable void. That's why the slightest technical hitch, the slightest slip on the part of the presenter becomes so exciting, for it reveals the depth of the emptiness squinting out at us through this little window.
-Jean Baudrillard
|
|
|
|
It is precisely the purpose of the public opinion generated by the press to make the public incapable of judging, to insinuate into it the attitude of someone irresponsible, uninformed.
-Walter Benjamin
|
|
|
|
The media network has its idols, but its principal idol is its own style which generates an aura of winning and leaves the rest in darkness. It recognizes neither pity nor pitilessness.
-John Berger
|
|
|
|
There's no business like show business.
-Irving Berlin
|
|
|
|
The greatest felony in the news business today is to be behind, or to miss a big story. So speed and quantity substitute for thoroughness and quality, for accuracy and context.
-Carl Bernstein
In Guardian, (London), June 3, 1992
|
|
|
|
Increasingly, the picture of our society as rendered in our media is illusionary and delusionary: disfigured, unreal, out of touch with reality, disconnected from the true context of our life. It is disfigured by celebrity, by celebrity worship, by gossip, by sensationalism, by denial of our societies
-Carl Bernstein
|
|
|
|
There was a time when the reader of an unexciting newspaper would remark, 'How dull is the world today!' Nowadays he says, 'What a dull newspaper!'
-Daniel J. Boorstin
The Image, 1962
|
|
|
|
Society cannot share a common communication system so long as it is split into warring factions.
-Bertolt Brecht
|
|
|
|
The press and politicians. A delicate relationship. Too close, and danger ensues. Too far apart and democracy itself cannot function without the essential exchange of information. Creative leaks, a discreet lunch, interchange in the Lobby, the art of the unattributable telephone call, late at night.
-Howard Brenton
|
|
|
|
Media, the plural of mediocrity.
-Jimmy Breslin
|
|
|
|
The only reason this country is different from any place else is that once in a great while, this huge, snobbish, generally untalented news reporting business stops covering stories of interest only to itself and actually serves the public.
-Jimmy Breslin
|
|
|
|
Cinema, radio, television, magazines are a school of inattention: people look without seeing, listen in without hearing.
-Robert Bresson
|
|
|
|
If the sexual revolution has been a medical disaster, socially it has been a catastrophe. Why do the media not report and explore the tragic results of the sexual revolution? Because many are collaborators.
-Patrick J. Buchanan
|
|
|
|
I think that in the minds of many, the press is being seen less and less as a neutral observer in the impeachment enterprise and more and more as participants, or even collaborators. On Media's Participation In Watergate
-Patrick J. Buchanan
|
|
|
|
The most important service rendered by the press and the magazines is that of educating people to approach printed matter with distrust.
-Samuel Butler
|
|
|
|
Mark Twain supposedly observed, 'Don't pick a fight with anyone who buys ink by the barrel and paper by the ton.' Of course, today, he probably would have added, 'And hairspray by the gallon'.
-Thomas F. Calcagni
Tough Questions - Good Answers: Taking Control of Any Interview (Capital Books) ISBN 13:978-1-933102-50-4
|
|
|
|
A free press can, of course, be good or bad, but, most certainly without freedom, the press will never be anything but bad.
-Albert Camus
|
|
|
|
We've uncovered some embarrassing ancestors in the not-too-distant past. Some horse thieves, and some people killed on Saturday nights. One of my relatives, unfortunately, was even in the newspaper business.
-Jimmy Carter
|
|
|
|
The media transforms the great silence of things into its opposite. Formerly constituting a secret, the real now talks constantly. News reports, information, statistics, and surveys are everywhere.
-Michel De Certeau
|
|
Books about Media
