Haskell Wexler Quotes

Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people's vanity, ignorance or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse.

In politics there is a lot of spin—a lot of BS. My job is to cut through the BS.

If the reporter has killed our imagination with his truth, he threatens our life with his lies.

I think 20th century media were about tricking people - and the beauty of the Internet is you can't lie anymore.

The first casualty when war comes is truth.

They say the camera never lies. It lies every day.

In politics, a lie unanswered becomes truth within 24 hours.

The expressions of newspapers, like those of orators, could not be accepted without allowance, for they aimed at producing some desired effect, and said either more or less than the truth.

The camera cannot lie. But it can be an accessory to untruth.

Propaganda must not serve the truth, especially insofar as it might bring out something favorable to the opponent.... The victor will never be asked if he told the truth.

Of all newspaper presses, I never heard anyone deny that the American is the worst.... [N]othing is easier than to make the people know only one side of a question; few things are easier than to keep them altogether from the knowledge of any particular affair; and, worse than all, on them [the American people] may easily be practiced the discovery that lies may work their intended effect, before the truth can overtake them. It is hard to tell which is worse; the wide diffusion of things that are not true or the suppression of things that are.

Falsehood and delusion are allowed in no case whatsoever. But, as in the exercise of all the virtues, there is an economy of truth.

Editorialists who tell downright lies in order to advance their own agendas do more to discredit the press than all the censors in the world.

Does an American, when he represents all Americans, have to tell the truth at any cost? The answer is yes, and the consequence of the answer is that our techniques for influencing the rest of the world cannot be rich and flexible like the techniques of our competitors. We can be dramatic, even theatrical; we can be persuasive; but the message we are telling must be true.

Donald Trump really understood how to float a story, how to float a rumor, how to manipulate the truth.

How do wars start? Diplomats tell lies to journalists, then believe what they read.

Fake news has been around as long as news has been around.

Television is never more false than when it's openly sincere.

The oblique paradox of propaganda is that the lie in the throat becomes, by repetition, the truth in the heart.

Every edit is a lie.

If you keep saying two plus two equals five over and over again, then that is what people are going to think. Maybe it does equal five if we keep changing the definition of what's normal and what's right and what's wrong.

It's part of the general global hypnotism to accept lies as the new truth.

I think there are a lot of reasons to be critical of the media in America.

Man's mind is so formed that it is far more susceptible to falsehood than to truth.

Partial truths or half-truths are often more insidious than total falsehoods.