Media Control and Censorship
" ... so long as
the media are in corporate hands, the task of social change will
be vastly more difficult, if not impossible ..."
Robert McChesney, journalist
and author
"As long as people
are marginalized and distracted [they] have no way to organize
or articulate their sentiments, or even know that others have
these sentiments. People assume
that they are the only people with a crazy idea in their heads.
They never hear it from anywhere else. Nobody's supposed to think
that. ... Since there's no way to get together with other people
who share or reinforce that view and help you articulate it, you
feel like an oddity, an oddball. So you just stay on the side
and you don't pay any attention to what's going on. You look at
something else, like the Superbowl."
Noam Chomsky, American linguist
and US media and foreign policy critic
"You have presented
to stations around the world a model for freedom of speech and
the unhindered availability of information... You have shown that
despite media monopolies and manipulations it is possible to preserve
a spirit of tolerance, freedom and truth and to allow dissenting
voices to be heard... Your struggle to preserve your autonomy...
has revealed an unexpected similarity between the media in the
US and Serbia today, the freedom of speech is being stifled in
a similar manner, journalists are being .. intimidated and progressive
radio stations are prevented from operating. The character of
media repression is virtually the same under openly totalitarian
dictatorships as it is under democratic systems which are increasingly
influenced by conservative structures."
A message of solidarity
from banned independent radio station B92 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia
to Radio KPFA in Berkeley and Radio WBAI in New York, expressing
support in their struggle to preserve progressive community radio
in the United States - July 1999
" Any dictator would
admire the uniformity and obedience of the [U.S.] media."
Noam Chomsky, American linguist
and US media and foreign policy critic
*****
" I have the greatest
admiration for your propaganda. Propaganda in the West is carried
out by experts who have had the best training in the world --
in the field of advertizing -- and have mastered the techniques
with exceptional proficiency ... Yours are subtle and persuasive;
ours are crude and obvious ... I think that the fundamental difference
between our worlds, with respect to propaganda, is quite simple.
You tend to believe yours ... and we tend to disbelieve ours.
"
a Soviet correspondent based
five years in the U.S.
" I know of no country
in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom
of discussion as in America. "
Alexis de Tocqueville, 1805
- 1859, French political thinker and author of Democracy in America
"Newspapers are unable,
seemingly, to discriminate between a bicycle accident and the
collapse of civilization."
George Bernard Shaw, Irish
playwight and critic, 1856-1950
*****
"There is no such
thing, at this date of the world's history, in America, as an
independent press. 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. We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the
scenes. We are the 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."
John Swinton, Chief of Staff
New York Times at New York Press Club, 1953
*****
"The opinion of 10,000
men is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject."
Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor from 121-180 A.D. and Stoic philosopher
" ... the media in
the United States effectively represents the interests of corporate
America, and ... the media elite are the watchdogs of what constitutes
acceptable ideological messages, the parameters of news and information
content, and the general use of media resources.
Peter Phillips, Project Censored,
1998
*****
" [The] media, our
top elected official, and our two dominant political parties rarely
criticize the growing power of large corporations because they
are bankrolled by them."
Nancy Snow, author
*****
" The most dangerous
criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals.
"
Martin Luther King, Jr.
*****
" Martin Luther King
is the most notorious liar in the country."
J. Edgar Hoover, Director
of the FBI 1924-1972
"Basic civil liberties
including the right to life, liberty and the freedom of personal
and political expression, suffered a drastic setback in 1981.
In more than a dozen regional nations, even the most fundamental
rights -- life and the inviolability of the person -- were transgressed
by the government-condoned practice of harassing, torturing and
murdering political opponents of those in power ... These reverses
can be linked to policies adopted by the Reagan administration
... [which] has allied the U.S. with the most violent regimes
in the hemispere. He [Reagan] has sanctioned atrocities and human
rights abuses by providing those governments with essentially
unconditioned U.S. support."
Council on Hemispheric Affairs,
1982
*****
"We have never interfered
in the internal government of a country and have no intention
of doing so, never have had any thought of that kind."
Ronald Reagan, 1982
*****
" Good journalism
is being criminalized or otherwise rendered perilous to its best
practitioners. Attack a government agency like the CIA, or a Fortune
500 member ..., or the conduct of the military in Southeast Asia
and you find yourself in deep trouble, naked and often alone.
"
Daniel Schorr, journalist
*****
" The owners of the
Washington Post long ago acknowledged that the Post is the government's
voice to the people. In 1981, Katherine Graham, who owns the Post
and Newsweek announced that her editors would "cooperate
with the national security interests." National security
in this context means "CIA.""
John Stockwell, former CIA
official and author
*****
" Governments lie."
I.F. Stone, journalist and
author
" The news and truth
are not the same thing. "
Walter Lippmann, American
journalist, 1889-1974
*****
" The notion that
journalism can regularly produce a product that violates the fundamental
interests of media owners and advertisers ... is absurd."
Robert McChesney, journalist
and author
" [The Laos operation]
is something of which we can be proud as Americans.
It has involved virtually no American casualties. What we are
getting for our money there ... is, I think, to use the old phrase,
very cost effective."
U. Alexis Johnson, US Under
Secretary of State in 1971 about American carpet-bombing of Laos
which killed hundreds-of-thousands of civilians
*****
"We [the U.S.] have
over 200 incidents in which we have put our troops into other
countries to force them to our will."
John Stockwell, former CIA
official and author
" 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, novelist and
critic
*****
" There's a whole
journalistic-industrial complex dedicated to keeping newsprint,
TV screens and radio waves clean of destabilizing scoops damaging
to corporations or the state."
Alexander Cockburn, journalist
"The 'corporatization
of America' during the past century [has been] an attack on democracy."
Noam Chomsky, American linguist
and US media and foreign policy critic
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