Molly Ivins Quotes

The country is in some trouble, because the media, which is supposed to provide a check and balance on government, has decided to stop doing that as a collective entity.

Most people I've talked to are convinced that they're not getting valuable information from news media anymore. I'm not talking about tinfoil-hatters either, these are intelligent people who believe their news media has failed them.

The papers, you know, they're always gonna just make stuff up. They think it's in the public interest.

There are good reasons why everybody should heed politicians' advise not to believe the media. One of the best is that the media report what politicians say.

I don't think people maybe think that the government does tell them the truth. I think they expect politicians who are going to tell them one thing and then when they get in office do something else.

Headlines, in a way, are what mislead you because bad news is a headline, and gradual improvement is not.

And we've become very doubtful of our information sources, because they're all controlled by these huge multilateral corporations.

War coverage should be more than a parade of retired generals and retired government flacks posing as reporters.

American media has just become talk radio, incredibly partisan name-calling and op-eds. I think the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan proved it has completely failed to act as an effective fourth estate. And young people didn't sleep through that, as is widely believed; they learned instead not to trust what they were being told.

I never, ever have seen media this way. It's almost indescribable. Making up stories, refusing to run real stories. It's making themselves look like utter fools. There's no journalism, there is no media. There's pure, full-fledged advocacy here.

The press never accepts at face value that the President is taking a certain action because he wants to create jobs or because he believes that it is in the best interests of the American people or that he is genuinely committed to making life better for people.

It is not true that Pena is 20 points above me. It's part of the management of the regime. They have control of the media, with few exceptions.

Distrust of government isn't baseless cynicism. It's realism.

Paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell.

A good government can no more exist without propaganda than propaganda can exist without a good government.

The few ... being closely combined ... inploy no printers [journalists and writers] but those that will adhear strictly to their vuies and interests.

Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people

The most patriotic and American thing you can do is to distrust your government

What you say about the newspapers is very true ... They are indeed a curious compound of truth and untruth. I am so used to newspaper nonsense and attacks that I do not mind it in the least....

I've always had a kind of knee-jerk trust in my Government's basic integrity, whatever political blunders it may make. But I've come to realize that in Washington, deceiving and manipulating the public are viewed by some as the natural prerogatives of office.

Some people will say that words like ‘scum’ and ‘rotten’ are wrong for Objective Journalism — which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place. He looked so good on paper that you could almost vote for him sight unseen. He seemed so all-American, so much like Horatio Alger, that he was able to slip through the cracks of Objective Journalism. You had to get Subjective to see Nixon clearly, and the shock of recognition was often painful.

People don't trust anything anymore. We don't trust our government. We don't trust our automobile makers. We don't trust our pharmaceutical houses. We don't trust our doctors or our hospitals or our cops. We don't trust Congress. And a lot of Americans don't trust the president of the U.S. So the media are simply regarded as another piece of the American establishment. People think we're trying to get away with something, trying to pull the wool over their eyes, trying to push an agenda..

All in all, I just don't trust journalists - and I don't think it's a good practice for me to trust journalists.

Erosion of faith and trust in government - that is the real problem that confronts us.

The media is done, they don't do journalism anymore, it's activism, nothing more, right?