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2006 February 17
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"During a war, news should be given out
for instruction rather than information." |
"Some who are too scrupulous to steal your possessions nevertheless see no wrong in tampering with your thoughts." |
"The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people
forget that certain other sets of people are human." |
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2006 February 16
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"The first duty of a newspaper is to be accurate.
If it is accurate, it follows that it is fair." |
"An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained
intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve
that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and
a mockery. A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in
time a people as base as itself." |
"In the United States there is no phenomenon more threatening to
popular government than the unwillingness of newspapers to give
the facts to their readers." |
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2006 February 15
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"The media I've had a lot to do with is lazy.
We fed them and they ate it every day." |
"It is a general popular error to suppose
the loudest complainers for the public
to be the most anxious for its welfare." |
"There is danger in the concentration of control in the television and radio networks, especially in the large television and radio stations; danger in the concentration of ownership in the press… and danger in the increasing concentration of selection by book publishers and reviewers and by the producers of radio and television programs." |
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2006 February 14
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"The bigger the information media, the less courage and information they allow. Bigness means weakness." |
"There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, in
America as an independent press. You know it and I know it.
There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions,
and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in
print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinions out of the
paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries
for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to
write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another
job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my
paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone.
The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth;
to lie outright;
to pervert;
to vilify;
to fawn at the feet of mammon, and
to sell his country and his race for his daily bread.
You know it and I know it and what folly is this toasting an
independent press? We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind
the scenes. We are jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we
dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the
property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes." |
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2006 February 13
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"I am far from denying that newspapers in democratic countries
lead citizens to do very ill-considered things in common;
but without newspapers there would be hardly any common action at all.
So they mend many more ills than they cause." |
"If newsmen do not tell the truth as they see it
because it might make waves, or if their bosses decide
something should or should not be broadcast
because of Washington or Main Street consequences,
we have dishonored ourselves and
we have lost the First Amendment by default." |
"Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper.
Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle." |
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