Naomi Klein Quotes

The job of the press is to encourage debate, not to supply the public with information.

I used to think the press was a necessary evil and now I don't think it is. I think it's something you choose.

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.

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 don't think we treat people very well in the media, both as customers - and I call them customers - of newspapers and magazines, or TV news, and we don't understand that the greatest story that we could tell, each and every day, is the story of the people around us.

Asking the question whether the mainstream media has a liberal or conservative bias is like asking whether al Qaeda uses too much oil in their hummus. I might think they use a little bit too much oil; some people might think it's a little dry. But the problem with al Qaeda is they want to kill us. And the problem with the mainstream media is that it has these other biases that are much more important.

The media are very dishonest. In fact, in covering my comments, the dishonest media did not explain that I called the fake news the enemy of the people - the fake news. They dropped off the word "fake." And all of the sudden, the story became, the media is the enemy. They take the word "fake" out, and now I'm saying, oh, no, this is no good. But that's the way they are. So I'm not against the media. I'm not against the press. I don't mind bad stories if I deserve them. And I tell you, I love good stories, but we won't - I don't get too many of them.

We've got a poll out there saying that Obamacare has never been more popular? Well, maybe it's people like at 25% and it's only gotten to 23% before, who knows, but the headline is so misleading, it's fake news. And that's gonna continue.

The press has become so dishonest that if we don't talk about, we are doing a tremendous disservice to the American people. Tremendous disservice. We have to talk to find out what's going on, because the press honestly is out of control. The level of dishonesty is out of control.

I called the fake news "the enemy of the people" - and they are. They are the enemy of the people. Because they have no sources, they just make them up when there are none.

If fake news that's being released by some foreign government is almost identical to reports that are being issued through partisan news venues, then it's not surprising that that foreign propaganda will have a greater effect, because it doesn't seem that far-fetched compared to some of the other stuff that folks are hearing from domestic propagandists.

I think what we try to do is bring the news to our viewers in a very comprehensive responsible way.

I think the most important thing for the public and the press is to just listen to what Donald Trump says and follow up and ask questions about what appear to be either contradictory or uninformed or outright wacky ideas.

The problem is that, you know, the corporate press loves [Donald Trump].

When you look at the New York Times and you pick it up in the morning, at the top of the paper there's three stories that are anti-Trump. Some of them baseless, some of them silly. And at the bottom you get something about WikiLeaks. Same thing with The Washington Post. Way out of control.

When you talk about President Trump, the cable networks turned over so many hours of prime time to him. Why? Because he was entertaining, but also because it drove ratings. And that is different from what the news media is supposed to focus on.

So that all the people who say, you know, "All the media hates America." A lot of the media does hate America but this is a case of, actually, the press doing its best, I think, to do the right by national security. So good for them.

Everybody wrings their hands about Fox News. You know, "fair and balanced? Why, that's snide!" Yeah, okay, maybe they're not fair and balanced, but CNN used to have the slogan "You Can Depend on CNN". Guess what? I watch it, no you can't. So what's the difference?

There are millions of people fed up with this daily diet of drivel from the Drive-By Media. But the media thinks everybody in America is waiting with bated breath for Trump to be convicted. They're totally, totally out of touch. The disconnect between everything going on in Washington and the real country has never been wider.

The cable news channels have cleverly seized on the creed of objectivity and redefined it in populist terms. They attack news based on verifiable fact for its liberal bias, for, in essence, failing to be objective, and promise a return to genuine objectivity.

The U.S. corporate media, otherwise known as the "free press," is that hollow pillar on which contemporary American democracy rests.

There's a fine line between balanced journalism and trial by television.

At no time in our lives has the media ever acknowledged they were wrong about anybody. They have never felt the need to apologize for getting something terribly wrong. They have never, after trying to character assassinate people, apologized for doing it when shown they're wrong.

When you get arrested it's in big letters. When you get acquitted it's in small letters.

This impressed me when I was the editor of the Sunday Times [of London] - we had the "Bloody Sunday" killings of 13 unarmed civilians by British paratroopers. We interviewed 500 people for our report, and not one of them could give us a total picture of what was happening. It was like the Rashomon effect multiplied a million times. For a website or even a newspaper to be a collector of information flow is not the highest form of journalism.