Quotes about the news media

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

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Dylan Ratigan offers a coherent message to the Wall Street occupiers

Dylan Ratigan holds that all of our representatives are trapped by the money coursing through the political system and that we need to free them all at once with a Constitutional Amendment. He discusses the Wall Street occupation with Bernie Sanders, who expands the conversation to include more than Wall Street, noting the problems with the military-industrial complex and other well-monied industries. Sanders sums up his aim: To allow "ordinary people to have power to determine what happens."

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Darwin’s strange inversions

In this humor-laden short TED talk, philosopher Daniel Dennett discusses things that seem to be intrinsically sweet, sexy, cute or funny. Actually, there is NOTHING that intrinsically has any of these qualities. These qualities don't exist out in the world. Rather, you need to look inside our brains to determine any of these qualities. We are wired to have these reactions when we encounter certain stimuli. There is nothing sweet, for example, in a molecule of glucose.

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Citizens United revisited

At In These Times, Joel Bleifuss sums up the damage caused by The United States Supreme Court decision of Citizen's United:

In a political system where profit-driven corporations control both the nation’s dominant political parties and the legislative agenda, it is unlikely that any policy initiatives that disadvantage corporate interests will thrive. Citizens United creates a rocky road indeed for universal healthcare, legislation to combat climate change, a clean energy policy, an economy geared toward butter rather than guns, a tax structure that provides funding for human needs, an agricultural policy that serves family farmers, ethics legislation to regulate lobbyists, prohibitions against environmental toxins and an economy that provides a living wage to all willing workers.

. . .

And by curtailing transparency, the decision “profoundly affected the nation’s political landscape,” the Center for Responsive Politics wrote in its analysis of the November 2010 general election. Citizens United allowed nonprofit 501(c)4 and 501(c)5 organizations “to spend unlimited amounts of money running … political advertisements while not revealing their donors.” Among the center’s other findings:

• “Corporate donations are likely higher than reported, as conservative nonprofit groups spent $121 million [in the 2010 general election] without disclosing where the money came from.”

• Since the 2006 midterm elections, the percentage of spending from undisclosed donors has risen from 1 to 47 percent.

• In 2010, 72 percent of political ad dollars from outside groups would have been prohibited in 2006.

This article examines several approaches being floated for combatting the destructive effects of Citizens United, including ways of amending the United States Constitution.

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Girl Scouts hammer cookie customers who give them bad checks

A few years ago, I dared to touch the third rail of alleged child entrepreneurialship when I suggested that instead of buying Girl Scout cookies, people give the Girl Scouts a direct cash donation. By offering to give the little girl at the door $5 cash (while her mother dutifully stands next to her prodding her to utter the sales pitch), it would be the equivalent of buying 10 boxes of sugary cookies (I had been told that the local troop only gets 50 cents for each $4 box of cookies sold). I stirred up quite a hornet’s nest by writing that article, despite the fact that I wrote it with good intentions (I was concerned about the top-heavy high paid administration of the national Girl Scouts organization and I was cognizant that almost 100 million Americans have diabetes or pre-diabetes). Take a look at the 128 comments to that post and see the commotion yourself. Now for another observation about the Girl Scouts. Yesterday I learned that the Girl Scouts have sued hundreds of people in Missouri courts (and presumably tens of thousands of people nationwide). The problem is that many people are handing the Girl Scouts bad checks when it comes time to pay for the cookies. Enter “Girl Scouts” in the “Litigant Name Search” at the Missouri Case Net website. You’ll find 80 pages of law suits brought in Missouri, most of them where the Girl Scouts have sued customers who allegedly gave the Girl Scouts bad checks as payment for cookies. In the City of St. Louis City alone, you’ll see ten pages of these suits on Case Net each of those pages listing eight suits.

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