Mikhail Gorbachev Quotes

The front pages of The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times are very important in shaping what other people think. They're like writing a memo to the White House.

The newspapers, magazines and other journals of the country, it is safe to say, have shed and continue to shed, more light on the public and business affairs of, the nation than any other instrumentality of public; and since informed public opinion is the most potent of all restraints upon misgovernment, the suppression or abridgment of the publicity afforded by a free press cannot be regarded otherwise than with grave concern.

Newspapers form public opinion, but public opinion also influences newspapers. The general masses are not like horses that can be tamed and trained to do their masters bidding.

Our government has become too responsive to trivial or ephemeral concerns, often at the expense of more important concerns or an erosion of our liberty, and it has made policy priorities more dependent on where TV journalists happen to point their cameras....

The press must grow day in and day out — it is our Party's sharpest and most powerful weapon.

Whatever may be said about the power of the press, it is undeniable that it can set the entire public thinking and talking about any topic ...

Newspapers are the schoolmasters of the common people.

Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play.

Television is democracy at its ugliest.

A newspaper is the lowest thing there is.

It is the absolute right of the State to supervise the formation of public opinion.

Every newspaper lives by appealing to a particular public. It can only go ahead of its times if it carries its public with it. Success in journalism depends on understanding the public.

The [London] Times has made many ministries.

How united would the United States be without its newspapers?

The media can make or break an administration.

With the instrument of radio you can make public opinion. Perhaps even conquer a country.

What matters to the press matters perforce to politicians.

The state must not ... let itself be confused by the drivel about so-called "freedom of the press," ... it must make sure of this instrument of popular education, and place it in the service of the state.

Then there is the newspaper press, that huge engine for making the political test final.

The press tends to reflect what's important to the country.

Newspapers at that time did not necessarily try to flatter those in power. Rather, they wrote to please readers. I may sound evasive. but there certainly existed some kind of mechanism that aggravated the situation through subtle interactions between newspapers and the public. Readers were waiting for articles reporting the exploits of the victorious Imperial Forces, Newspapers indulged themselves in a competition to appear more patriotic and to see who could print the most articles urging and exalting victory. Newspaper companies cooperated through the dispatch of entertainers, calls for patriotic songs, campaigns for contributions to build more airplanes, and various other ways. The heavy responsibility that the newspapers bear is second only to that of the government.

The White House expansion to control the entire corpus of the News was the direct result of television.

The primary purpose of the media is to mobilize support for the controlling interests.

The force of the newspaper is the greatest force in civilization.... [Newspapers] declare wars ... make and unmake statesmen.

Not long ago, if you wanted to seize political power in a country you had merely to control the army and the police. Today it is only in the most backward countries that fascist generals, in carrying out a coup d'état, still use tanks. If a country has reached a high degree of industrialization the whole scene changes. The day after the fall of Khrushchev, the editors of Pravda, Izvestiia, the heads of the radio and television were replaced; the army wasn't called out. Today a country belongs to the person who controls communications.