Mo Rocca Quotes
If there's one thing that everyone can agree on, it's that, right or wrong, they hate the press.
Rocca, Mo. Electoral Dysfunction. Center for Independent Documentary, 2012.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910
In 1948 in the midst of the Red Scare the HUAC and its Senate counterpart had started to hound a former Assistant Secretary of State, Lawrence Duggan. Typical of the times, those who disagreed with Duggan’s political views anonymously leaked material to the press alleging that Duggan might have been a spy. The press had a feeding frenzy and Dugan committed suicide in the midst of the pressure. Most in Congress paused to contemplate the consequence of what was occurring. Even Richard M. Nixon regretted the “misunderstandings.” Dugan’s father, however, an old acquaintance of Edward R. Murrow, the then dean of American broadcasters, however primarily blamed the press for printing all the unsubstantiated rumor and innuendo.
Otehr members of the Trump staff then started to echo the notion and it became common in Trumpian circles.
This is perhaps a situation that has existed in every country ever where the press was not controlled.
Vladimir Lenin. Lenin was echoing criticisms that were made the world over and even by some in the United States. However, his solution to have the press controlled by the ruling party just changed the cast of characters who were propagandizing and distorting the truth. Lenin was not able to offer a better solution nor were others. However, with enough affluence the capitalist society produced enough different publishers all competing that one did not dominate public opinion. With technology of TV and the Internet, the bar to entry is so small that almost anyone can be a publisher and find an interested market. In a way technology has solved much of the problem for capitalistic and totalitarian societies alike. In the latter, even censorship is not easy or feasible on a large scale.
Maurice Alberto Rocca is an American humorist, journalist, and actor. He is a correspondent for CBS Sunday Morning, the host and creator of My Grandmother's Ravioli on the Cooking Channel, and also the host of The Henry Ford's Innovation Nation on CBS. He is the moderator of the National Geographic Society's National Geographic Bee. He is also the host of the podcast Mobituaries with Mo Rocca from CBS News. He is a regular panelist on the radio quiz show Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!
