Alastair Campbell Quotes

The age of spin should be over.

I remain terrified of the capacity of the media, the capacity of spin doctors, here and abroad, particularly the United States media, to perpetuate false lies, perpetuate lies.

There's a way in which these guys all think absolutely media, day and night. Access is what it's all about, so they spin 24 hours a day and that's a problem.

To be sure, administrations since Ronald Reagan had gone out of their way to massage and 'spin' news to the president's advantage, while the media did its best to un-spin it.

Everyone loves to hate a spin doctor.

The genius of David Petraeus has always been his masterful manipulation of the media.

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

The presentation of an issue can no longer be controlled.

Every successful president has suffered imputations that he has in sinister fashion charmed the press or used a new medium of communication (radio, television, the Internet) to claim an undeserved standing.

…Democrats are complaining that they can’t get their message out … because Donald Trump has blotted out the media sun. … The eclipse won’t end. The media has turned the Trump presidency into a phenomenon of constant self-absorption—their self-absorption in this one person. Donald Trump has become the biggest balloon in a political Macy’s parade of modern media’s own creation. They could let go of the ropes. But they won’t.

The media makes a big deal of small issues.

What a joy it is to see really professional media manipulation.

People think they're getting objective information, but they're not. They're getting news wrapped up in opinion.

Most Americans may not realize that the news they consume is driven in part by the media mantra, 'if it bleeds, it leads.'

News represents another form of advertising, not liberal propaganda.

The media works in sound bites. They can make you look like a genius or stupid.

When governments rely increasingly on sophisticated public relations agencies, public debate disappears and is replaced by competing propaganda campaigns, with all the accompanying deceits. Advertising isn't about truth or fairness or rationality, but about mobilising deeper and more primitive layers of the human mind.

People say I manipulate the media. Well, duh. We live in a media culture, so why on earth wouldn't I?

We studied Western journalists' reporting methods, fed them story ideas, steered them toward sympathetic interviewees, and supplied them with the revolutionary movement's facts and figures.

Politics is the business of managing perceptions.

The media can make or break an administration.

Everyone in politics turns to the press, if only to manipulate it or deflect it.

We’re going to sell Jack like soap flakes. There are no accidents in politics.

In politics there is a lot of spin—a lot of BS. My job is to cut through the BS.

There is no lie too improbable, no distortion too great, no smear campaign too dirty for the State Department and the media to embrace.