Roseanne Barr Quotes

In film and television we are oftentimes so pampered that the truths are withheld.

I think that much of the truth has been withheld from the American people.

Pick the topic you like: the Middle East, international terrorism, Central America, whatever it is - the picture of the world that's presented to the public has only the remotest relation to reality. The truth of the matter is buried under edifice after edifice of lies upon lies. It's all been a marvelous success from the point of view in deterring the threat of democracy, achieved under conditions of freedom, which is extremely interesting. It's not like a totalitarian state, where it's done by force. These achievements are under conditions of freedom.

Some of the press who speak loudly about the freedom of the press are themselves the enemies of freedom. Countless people dare not say a thing because they know it will be picked up and made a song of by the press. That limits freedom.

During the run up to the Iraq War, Mike Farrell and I did get on television kind of frequently, but then they saw that that didn't work. They really couldn't bait us into being stupid, so they stopped. You know the mainstream media, corporate media, avoids ever giving anyone who has anything to say a platform, if they can possibly help it.

You have to be down here in the States to realize just how tightly controlled the corporate media is and how much they practise Soviet-style censorship through creative omission.

The Nixon administration really put a lot of pressure on CBS not to run the second broadcast.

The Central Propaganda Department is the highest-ranking censorship agency in China. And it has control over everything from the appointment of newspaper editors to university professors to the way that films are cut and distributed.

Bush and Blair combined their efforts to deceive both nations in a carefully coordinated manner, more so than anyone is willing to point out in the media.

In examining the CIA's past and present use of the U.S. media, the Committee finds two reasons for concern. The first is the potential, inherent in covert media operations, for manipulating or incidentally misleading the American public.

The Bush administration works closely with a network of rapid response digital brownshirts who work to pressure reporters and their editors for 'undermining support for our troops.'

By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth.

The media bring our wars home, but only rarely have they been able to do it in complete freedom.

News is what somebody somewhere wants to suppress; all the rest is advertising.

There are people who are very highly paid to cover the truth and who will protect their clients.

The mainstream media doesn't want to get into this because they don't want to know where this one goes.

... infiltrate and neutralize the mainstream American media.

This is probably my last free statement through our news media, where the radio and television are already under the heel of the ruling political party of Prime Minister Robert Mugabe. One would have thought radio and television were enough as propaganda tools.

What's public is propaganda, what's secret is serious.

Media manipulation in the U.S. today is more efficient than it was in Nazi Germany, because here we have the pretense that we are getting all the information we want. That misconception prevents people from even looking for the truth.

We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.

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

There is a power in our land, irresponsible, corrupt and malicious—‘the press,’ which has created the intense feelings of hostility that has arrayed the two parts of the country against each other, which must be curbed and brought within the just limits of reason and law, before we can have peace in America. We can deal with armies who have a visible and tangible existence, but it will require tact and skill and courage to clip the wings of this public enemy.

All over the world, wherever there are capitalists, freedom of the press means freedom to buy up newspapers, to buy writers, to bribe, buy and fake “public opinion” for the benefit of the bourgeoisie.

The media is an ally when it comes to showing the truth about terrorist groups. Attacking the media will not produce a more compliant citizenry. It will produce a more alienated, suspicious and disenfranchised public, one more likely to chafe under a government's attempts at control, all to the benefit of terrorist groups.