Alexandra Petri Quotes

Acting upon everybody for 30 minutes in 24 hours, the press is asked to create a mystical force called Public Opinion that will take up the slack in public institutions. The press has often mistakenly pretended that it could do just that.

Without television, Richard Nixon would not have a chance. He would not have a prayer of being elected because the press would not let him get through to the people.

In Russia, as well as everywhere else, the true and lasting power is that of public opinion, and of those who know how to influence it.

The Pulpit, the Press, and the Novel—these undisputedly are the great molders of public opinion and public morals to-day.

They have to put Trump on every program, spewing his crazy ideas, because his poll numbers are so high. And his poll numbers are so high because they put him on every program, spewing his crazy ideas.

It is not at all clear how much the media influences public opinion and how much public opinion influences the media.

Public opinion can be influential, the media can be influential.

Well I think the media has a very powerful influence on almost anything and everything we do because the general public gets their perception of what is going on in things they don't have immediate access to from what they get through the media.

There is a vast mass of opinion in this country represented neither by the politicians nor by the Press, and considerably saner than either.

The Press, which is mostly controlled by vested interests, has an excessive influence on public opinion.

Polls move money as much as money moves polls.

The media can make or break an administration.

We talk about the influence of the media on public opinion. But reality has some influence on public opinion too.

By choice, polls validate the media’s filtered view of the world.

Newspapers at that time did not necessarily try to flatter those in power. Rather, they wrote to please readers. I may sound evasive. but there certainly existed some kind of mechanism that aggravated the situation through subtle interactions between newspapers and the public. Readers were waiting for articles reporting the exploits of the victorious Imperial Forces, Newspapers indulged themselves in a competition to appear more patriotic and to see who could print the most articles urging and exalting victory. Newspaper companies cooperated through the dispatch of entertainers, calls for patriotic songs, campaigns for contributions to build more airplanes, and various other ways. The heavy responsibility that the newspapers bear is second only to that of the government.

Arab media is market driven like the American media. It does not so much shape public opinion as much as it reflects it.

Politics is television and whoever masters it is likely to win.

If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.

People see whatever the media first reports.

On March 8 a poll showed Hart 9 points ahead of Reagan. So perhaps 60 million Americans, 55 million of whom had not heard of Hart a month ago, have suddenly decided thay want him to be leader of the free world. The public mind is not just soft wax, it's runny.

No one today in Washington doubts the superior firepower of the media over that of the executive branch.

Public Policy Polling asked a broad sample of Democratic and Republican primary voters whether they would support bombing Agrabah. Nearly a third of Republican respondents said they would, versus 13 percent who opposed the idea. Democratic preferences were roughly reversed; 36 percent were opposed, and 19 percent were in favor. Agrabah doesn’t exist. It’s the fictional country in the 1992 Disney film Aladdin. Liberals crowed that the poll showed Republicans’ aggressive tendencies. Conservatives countered that it showed Democrats’ reflexive pacifism. Experts in national security couldn’t fail to notice that 43 percent of Republicans and 55 percent of Democrats polled had an actual, defined view on bombing a place in a cartoon.

Since the rise of television in the 1950s, the media have become the central forum for American politicking, and increasingly today that role is being played by the blogosphere. With the blogger and the viewer replacing the pamphleteer and the parader, politicians focus on marketing themselves and their causes to passive consumers rather than mobilizing passionate soldiers. The new language of politics sounds like this: Spin doctors stage photo ops as pollsters survey voter preferences, spawning celebrity candidates.

In the world's eyes, what they know of me is from the blogs. What they know is from the media.

I don't get bothered by the media. There is nothing in the media that makes me lose any sleep at night.