Amy Goodman Quotes

The primary purpose of the media is to mobilize support for the controlling interests.

Today, the media dictatorship is becoming a substitute to military dictatorship. The big economic groups are using the media and decide who can speak, who the good guy is and who the bad guy is.

Power in America today is control of the means of communication.

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.

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.

The U.S. corporate media, otherwise known as the "free press," is that hollow pillar on which contemporary American democracy rests.

Keep in mind, the news media are not independent; they are a sort of bulletin board and public relations firm for the ruling class-the people who run things. Those who decide what news you will or will not hear are paid by, and tolerated purely at the whim of, those who hold economic power. If the parent corporation doesn't want you to know something, it won't be on the news. Period. Or, at the very least, it will be slanted to suit them, and then rarely followed up.

I think the media is dangerously close to creating their own product. They used to cover the product, which was whatever's happening.

The greatest power of the mass media is the power to ignore. The worst thing about this power is that you may not even know you're using it.

The Congressional leaders set the agenda for journalism; it's not the other way around.

Most of the press is in league with government, or with the status quo.

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.

I cover media people the way they cover politicians.

The press is like a big bass, you just stick a hook in their mouth and they'll take it.

The strategies and assumptions [of the propaganda model] are fundamentally contrary to a democratic model.... The goal of the propaganda model is simply to achieve efficient indoctrination, and it therefore tends to regard the assumptions of the democratic model as inconvenient obstacles to efficient communication.

Give people control of the media and they will use it. Don’t give them control and you will lose it.

Whoever controls the media—the images—controls the culture.

The news media more and more considered the politicians to be props in their entertainment shows.

We do not need a censorship of the press. We have a censorship by the press.

The state must not ... let itself be confused by the drivel about so-called "freedom of the press," ... it must make sure of this instrument of popular education, and place it in the service of the state.

To say that the newspaper press represents public opinion is to administer insult to intelligent men. It is the property of speculators, political leaders, large contractors and railway directors.

Past occurrences have generally shown that there hasn’t been satisfaction from politicians in the manner they were covered [by the press.]

Newspapers form public opinion, but public opinion also influences newspapers. The general masses are not like horses that can be tamed and trained to do their masters bidding.

In order to govern you have to feed the news cycle

What you say about the newspapers is very true ... They are indeed a curious compound of truth and untruth. I am so used to newspaper nonsense and attacks that I do not mind it in the least....