A DI reader named Mike Baker offered to let me publish his collection of quotes. Today, I’m publishing his quotes concerning the news media:

The American mass media have achieved what American political might could not: World domination. — Akbar S. Ahmed

The safest way to ensure diversity of opinion is diverse ownership. But this ideal has been sacrificed by our government… — Ben Bagdikian

“See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.”
–George W. Bush, 43rd President, Greece, N.Y., May 24, 2005

“Here’s how it works: the president makes decisions. He’s the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put ’em through a spell check and go home.”
— Stephen Colbert

I think it is absolutely essential in a democracy to have competition in the media, a lot of competition, and we seem to be moving away from that. — Walter Cronkite

I certainly think we have an emergency in media, and we gotta fix it. — Phil Donahue

Search for the truth is the noblest occupation of man; its publication is a duty.
~Anne Louise Germaine de Stael

Journalism is the only profession explicitly protected by the U.S. Constitution, because journalists are supposed to be the check and balance on government. We’re supposed to be holding those in power accountable. We’re not supposed to be their megaphone. That’s what the corporate media have become. — Amy Goodman

“Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it”
–Adolph Hitler, Chancellor of Germany 1933-1945

Since an informed citizenry is the basis for a healthy democracy, independent, non-corporate media are more crucial today than ever before — Dahr Jamail

“Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”
-Thomas Jefferson, “Letter to Col. Edward Carrington”, January 16, 1787

Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.
~ Thomas Jefferson

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie–diliberate, contrived, and dishonest–but the myth–persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. -John F. Kennedy

“The news and truth are not the same thing.” –Walter Lippmann, 1889-1974, American journalist

“Disinformation is a large part of its[CIA] covert action responsibility, and the American people are the primary target of its lies.”
–Ralph McGehee, former CIA intelligence analyst, author of Deadly Deceits: My 25 Years in the CIA

“The result has been that an increasingly authoritarian agenda has been sold to the American people by a massive, multi-tentacled media machine that has become, for all intents and purposes, a propaganda organ of the state.” David McGowan

By the end of the millenium five men controlled the world’s media. And the people rejoiced, because their TVs told them to. — Michael Moore

The quality of democracy and the quality of journalism are deeply entwined. — Bill Moyers

An unconscious people, an indoctrinated people, a people fed only partisan information and opinion that confirm their own bias, a people made morbidly obese in mind and spirit by the junk food of propaganda is less inclined to put up a fight, ask questions and be skeptical. And just as a democracy can die of too many lies, that kind of orthodoxy can kill us, too. — Bill Moyers

“Put it before them briefly so they will read it, clearly so they will appreciate it, picturesquely so they will remember it and, above all, accurately so they will be guided by its light.”
~ Joseph Pulitzer

“The business of the journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell the country for his daily bread…We are tools and vassals for rich men behind the scenes…We are intellectual prostitutes.”
–John Swinton, New York Times editor in a speech before the New York Press Club, 1953

The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western world. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity – much less dissent. — Gore Vidal