Naomi Wolf Quotes

We must have a free press. If we are to maintain democracxy as we know it, we must have a free and adversarial press.... That's how dictoators get power [by intimidating, restriciting and censoring the press.]

It should be clear by now that my focus here is not freedom of speech or the press. This freedom is all too often an exaggeration. At the very least, blind references to freedom of speech or the press serve as a distraction from the critical examination of other communications policies.

When someone has to intervene to defend the liberty of the press, that society is sick.

Vietnam is often called our only uncensored war, but that only means that the government wasn't vetting the pictures and words.

The United States is paradise compared to China, Russia, Ecuador and Cuba, with regard to the press. And with regard to secrecy and transparency.

We believe that the remedy to any harm resulting from press freedom lies in press freedom itself.

You really can’t have a democracy if the government knows the content of every conversation between journalists and their sources. You can’t have a democracy with that kind of surveillance going on.

We journalists in America take it for granted that we are not going to be killed for our work. Unfortunately, this is not true elsewhere in the world.

A free press may be good or bad, but without freedom a press can only be bad.

Turkey still has one of the highest number of imprisoned journalists in the world.

The press is the only profession protected in the Constitution because of how important the framers viewed the press. But in authoritarian regimes, they control the press.

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

Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.

I'm not a big fan of regulation: anyone who likes freedom of the press can't be.

The media in America has become so cowed and compromised.

Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.

Fear rules almost every newsroom in the country.

At Grozny TV, the line between journalism and government propaganda is traversed as often as a Manhattan crosswalk.

I can only assume that your editorial writer tripped over the First Amendment and thought it was the office cat.

In a fascist shift, reporters start to face more and more harassment, and they have to be more and more courageous simply in order to do their jobs.

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.

A free press can of course be good or bad, but most certainly, without freedom it will never be anything but bad.

The newspapers of your country seem to be more powerful than the government.

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.

The suppression of the Socialist press has actually been more rapid and efficient in this republic than it was in the German Empire after the declaration of war. And as for our celebrated Anglo-Saxon tradition of free speech—you can’t even collect your thoughts without getting arrested for unlawful assemblage!