Benjamin H. Bagdikian Quotes

Whoever controls the media, controls the mind.

The hand that rules the press, the radio, the screen, and the far spread magazine, rules the country.

Whoever controls the media—the images—controls the culture.

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

The power of the periodical press is second only to that of the people.

Give people control of the media and they will use it. Don’t give them control and you will lose it.

It is the emergence of mass media which makes possible the use of propaganda techniques on a societal scale. The orchestration of press, radio and television to create a continuous, lasting and total environment renders the influence of propaganda virtually unnoticed precisely because it creates a constant environment.

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

The media is either our salvation or our death.

Power in America today is control of the means of communication.

The press ... is but the servant of human intellect and its ministry is for good or evil, according to the character of those who direct it. The press is a mill that grinds all that is put into its hopper. Fill the hopper with poisoned grain and it will grind it to meal, but there is death in the bread.

Thou god of our idolatry, the Press.

The nation whose population depends on the explosively compressed headline service of television news can expect to be exploited by the demagogues and dictators who prey upon the semi-informed.

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

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.

The media have disproportionate control of the information in our society.

The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.

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.

If those in charge of our society – politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television – can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves.

The media is so powerful.

I don't know how you can do it, if you don't recognition the media as a power center in America.

It is the emergence of mass media which makes possible the use of propaganda techniques on a societal scale.

There's no denying that television is one of the most powerful propaganda media we've ever invented.

This thing that Colin Powell's son is expected to do is kind of scary when you think that television and radio and newspapers are what make people think what they think.

Television is an instrument which can paralyze this country.