Alice Stone Blackwell Quotes

The news isn't there to tell you what happened. It's there to tell you what it wants you to hear or what it thinks you want to hear.

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.

You know it's always amazed me - I think the most startling thing that's happened in the last couple of decades is that there is no sort of objective reporting anymore.

News represents another form of advertising, not liberal propaganda.

The Arab Press is a deeply distorted lens.

We removed 'Russia Today' from the logo after many colleagues, also from foreign media, told us that it was diminishing our potential audience.

The American media is delivering nothing but fakeness.

Beginning, perhaps, from the reasonable perspective that absolute objectivity is unattainable, Fox News and MSNBC no longer even attempt it. They show us the world not as it is, but as partisans (and loyal viewers) at either end of the political spectrum would like it to be. This is to journalism what Bernie Madoff was to investment: He told his customers what they wanted to hear, and by the time they learned the truth, their money was gone.

I don't think anywhere you go to get news is news anymore. It is commentary, but mostly it is the advancement of agenda.

In a time of war the nation is always of one mind, eager to hear something good of themselves and ill of the enemy. At this time the task of the news-writer is easy; they have nothing to do but to tell that a battle is expected, and afterwards that a battle has been fought, in which we and our friends, whether conquering or conquered, did all, and our enemies did nothing.

I say it's unprecedented. Have we seen a president or an administration decide what's going to be fake news and what they dismiss in terms of answering? Because there has been fake news before. All of us have gone through that.

There's a fine line between information and propaganda.

In America, to have news that has explicitly taken a position is a very strange place to be in, and it's a very dangerous place to be in. And that's happening on Facebook, as you saw, and that's happening online. People are just being given their news and not the news, which is really, really scary.

News objectivity is a twentieth-century myth. We only complain about propaganda when we don't agree with it.

I think the media is among the most dishonest groups of people I've ever met.

Keep in mind, the news media are not independent; they are a sort of bulletin board and public relations firm for the ruling class-the people who run things. Those who decide what news you will or will not hear are paid by, and tolerated purely at the whim of, those who hold economic power. If the parent corporation doesn't want you to know something, it won't be on the news. Period. Or, at the very least, it will be slanted to suit them, and then rarely followed up.

Wow, the entire network of anchors has been hired to be the press secretary.

The New York times' long-standing motto, 'All the News That's Fit to Print,' should be changed to reflect today's reality: 'Manufacturing News to Fit an Ideology.'

When it comes to the news, the corporate view is 'objective,' all else is propaganda.

For years, right wing outlets like outlets like Fox News and talk radio have been telling their audience day after day that any information coming from outside of conservative media is not to be trusted.

The term propaganda rings melodramatic and exaggerated, but a press that—whether from fear, careerism, or conviction—uncritically recites false government claims and reports them as fact, or treats elected officials with a reverence reserved for royalty, cannot be accurately described as engaged in any other function.

During a recent panel on the numerous failures of American journalism, I proposed that almost all stories about government should begin: “Look out! They're about to smack you around again!

Editors and reporters are not as free and independent to invite a variety of opinions as they might think. They are free to say what they like only as long as their bosses like what they say. They are free to produce what they want if their product remains within acceptable political boundaries. You will have no sensation of a leash around your neck if you sit by the peg. It is only when your stray that you feel the restraining tug.

People who travel in China tell me that the mood there is still very upbeat, because their media is different from our media. Chinese media emphasize how well things are going and suppress the bad news and publish the good news.