Ralph Nader Quotes

The media and politics have never allowed our people to speak through them. The absolute marginalization of the indigenous peoples is a fact, as is sophisticated militarization. These have been the most significant ingredients in the silent war.

Third parties in America gravitate not only to the extremes, but to irrelevance. (John Anderson's upcoming presidential campaign will undoubtedly confirm both tendencies.)

The debate corporation is a corporation. It's funded by corporations. It's relayed by media corporations to the public. It's created by the two parties, which are corporations. We should have public presidential debates all over America run by public institutions.

These political movements flourish on the margins of Turkish society because of poverty and because of the people's feeling that they are not being represented.

Television was supposed to be a national park. Instead it has become a money machine. It's a commodity now, just like pork bellies.

The Christian Democrats always made you feel like the poor relation.

The major newspapers simply stopped writing about me, and my voice could no longer be heard on radio or television.

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

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

Ever since Gutenberg, every dynasty, every political leader, every major religion, has recognized that to control the media is to have a powerful instrument for controlling the values and behavior of a population.

A magazine, a publishing house, or a newspaper is not a personal affair; it is the affair of the party.

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

President Reagan brought us to the ultimate: America As Total Television. During his governance the printed word simply ceased to matter. White House dynamos had once telephoned newspapers to complain about unfair reporting. Not anymore. Now they telephoned network bosses. Even then it wasn't poor reporting they complained about, but poor pictures.

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.

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

We are going to have to endure an imperial media with a government by public opinion poll.

The shutting out or boycotting of selected media cannot take place in Austria.

Netanyahu wants to make me and my party out as small, lame and uninfluential.

The media traditionally is simply an arm of the Democrat Party that is used in service of advancing the Democrat Party agenda, and the Republicans haven't come up with a way of having a more engaging, entertaining story because the Republican story is never anything other than, "We don't want Democrat X to have what he wants."

We have more freedom of the press than any other country in a similar position. Even way back in the frightened '50s, Communists, for example, could publish their magazine. The KKK published their own books. But face it, the mass media is controlled by money.

...the mass media. What are they? They're huge corporations, massive corporations, linked up with even bigger corporations. They sell audiences to other businesses, namely advertisers. So when you turn on the television set, CBS doesn't make any money. They make money from the advertisers. You're the product that they're selling, and the same is true of the daily newspaper. They're huge corporations, selling audiences, potential consumers, to other businesses, all linked up closely to the government, especially the big media. What picture of the world do you expect them to present?

Everybody just lets the media do their thinking for them... that's why you'll never hear any reggae on the radio!

With all the mass media concentrated in a few hands, the ancient faith in the competition of ideas in the free market seems like a hollow echo of a much simpler day.

Rand Paul is taking a week-long break from talking to the media to spend time with his family before he officially announces that he is running for president. Because nothing motivates you to be on the road for two straight years like a week alone with your family.