James Fallows Quotes

There evolved a new media definition of civility that privileged "balance" over truth-telling—even when one side was lying. It's a real and profound change.

I think there are a lot of reasons to be critical of the media in America.

Television is something the Russians invented to destroy American education.

The press ... is but the servant of human intellect and its ministry is for good or evil, according to the character of those who direct it. The press is a mill that grinds all that is put into its hopper. Fill the hopper with poisoned grain and it will grind it to meal, but there is death in the bread.

Today the greatest evil—and therefore the most immediate—is the press.

Television is democracy at its ugliest.

A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.

It is precisely the purpose of the public opinion generated by the press to make the public incapable of judging, to insinuate into it the attitude of someone irresponsible, uninformed.

You can't get past the liberal press with a bucket of ink.

News and entertainment are getting dangerously intertwined.

The nation whose population depends on the explosively compressed headline service of television news can expect to be exploited by the demagogues and dictators who prey upon the semi-informed.

Television has shortened our political discourse.

A labouring man ... read and study halfe his time, and then be at a loss to know what is true and what not. Thus the few have almost ruined the Libberty of the press.

The media have disproportionate control of the information in our society.

It’s a lot easier and cheaper to have thumbsuckers and pundits on television than it is to have reporters and news bureaus around the world.

The media, famously called the marketplace of ideas, is a failed market when a strong interest faces no like interest to generate competing ideas.

Who wants to hear that he is wrong when he can be told that he is right? …. We are losing the ability to change our mind because of our media.

People stop believing what the media tells them when they see media superstars say things like, 'Let the economy fail.'

Members of the press have been so savaged by Trump and his propagandists in the media that journalists seem almost foreign or anti-American to his supporters.

The media do strange things.

We talk about a free press. These people hide, they make a lot of money off the media. They hide behind the slogans of free press, and then they can come out with crap like that. It's just garbage. It's insulting to the readers.

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

We need a free media, not just freedom of speech.

I think democracy's undermined when those who own newspapers fill them with trivia rather than real issues.

I think it's important in a democracy such as ours that we have multiple sources to get news and information and utilize the media only if we want to get a different opinion.