Media Watch
"There is no such thing
in America as an independent press, unless it is in the country
towns.
You know it and I know it.
There is not one of you who dares to writes (sic) his honest opinions,
and if you did you know beforehand that it would never appear
in print.
I am paid one hundred and fifty
dollars a week 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
his honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another
job.
The business of the New York
journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert,
to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his race
and his country for his daily bread.
You know this and I know it,
and what folly is this to be toasting an "Independent Press."
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, editor of the New
York Tribune, in the 1880s, at a banquet of his fellow editors
"One of the intentions
of corporate-controlled media is to instill in people a sense
of disempowerment, of immobilization and paralysis. Its outcome
is to turn you into good consumers. It is to keep people isolated,
to feel that there is no possibility for social change."
David Barsamian, journalist
Books on Media
Articles
"Give war a chance."
New York Times columnist Thomas
Friedman, about the US/NATO bombing of Yugoslavia
Who Gets To Be Heard
Alternatives to the Mainstream Media
Media Censorship
Excerpted books - alphabetical