Michael Arrington Quotes

We've been dealing with censorship around multimedia, about multinational companies and the content they create, for a very long time.

If AOL had ever ordered me to remove a piece of content from the site for any reason, I would have immediately written about it and disclosed the situation to our readers. And if I had ever ordered a writer to remove content, I would have expected that writer to have done the same to me.

I was for many years myself a journalist and it is not appropriate to say a programme should not be broadcast.

What comes with a job as a staff member of the BBC is a certain self-censoring that you get utterly used to. You don't say everything you think. You hold back on some things.

My level of intervention in the press, trying to control stories, is zero. Subzero.

We can make no such promises, but if the White House wanted to request the holding of a specific story, the request would have to come from the President to the Executive Editor or the Publisher.

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 Seven Deadly Sins of the Press: - Concentrated Power of the Big Press. - Passing of competition and the coming of monopoly. - Governmental control of the press. - Timidity, especially in the face of group and corporate pressures. - Big Business mentality. - Clannishness among the newspaper publishers that has prevented them from criticizing each other. - Social blindness.

The editor of a newspaper cannot be independent, but must work with one hand tied behind him by party and patrons, and be content to utter only half or two-thirds of his mind . writers of all kinds are manacled servants of the public. We write frankly and fearlessly, but then we "modify" before we print.

Newspapers are closed if they print the wrong things in Iran. Iranian journalists or Iranian-American journalists, for that matter, I think are pressured in a lot of different ways, expected to give information to intelligence services. Americans can be thrown out of the country.

Journalism is the protection between people and any sort of totalitarian rule. That's why my hero, admittedly a flawed one, is a journalist.

I can assure you that I have never used my media companies for propaganda, and I will never do so.

They may well say not only is this not true, but I will put in an injunction to prevent publication. No, stories don't go in unless I'm convinced by the people who write them that they're true. And if I'm wrong, then so be it.

Although I may find the type of programming seen during the 2004 Super Bowl and the 2003 Golden Globe Awards disgusting and disturbing, we must always work hard to defend the cherished freedoms so clearly outlined in our Constitution, including a healthy and free press.

Nobody from the administration has officially rejected my column.

It should be clear by now that my focus here is not freedom of speech or the press. This freedom is all too often an exaggeration. At the very least, blind references to freedom of speech or the press serve as a distraction from the critical examination of other communications policies.

And if there was something, suppose I wanted to write something really damning or embarrassing about one of the owners, that would really be a problem on the NFL's site.

I don't think any media has to feel obliged to show the cover of 'Charlie Hebdo.'

There's hardly any governmental censorship in Korea.

If I want to ban any newspaper, I will, with good reason.

There was no censorship of the press: in general, the War Measures Act could have been made even more radical.

Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.

Perhaps the biggest problem in journalism is the cult divide between journalists and corporate owners.

Family ownership provides the independence that is sometimes required to withstand governmental pressure and preserve freedom of the press.

We have got to make sure there is proper independent scrutiny and accountability for people in the press, just as there should be in any other industry where things go wrong. But let's not try and think it is for politicians or governments to tell people what they stick in newspapers. That is deeply illiberal.