Edmund S. Muskie Quotes

The front pages of The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times are very important in shaping what other people think. They're like writing a memo to the White House.

What matters to the press matters perforce to politicians.

Then there is the newspaper press, that huge engine for making the political test final.

The Washington Post is the first and prime source of information for the national government.... It can come very close to setting the nation's agenda.

The press has, at present, a great influence over public questions; and by far the greater and more influential part of it is engaged on the side of the capitalist.

Many newspapers have become players as well as spectators in the political debate.

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

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

The Press has not only a great influence over our manners and morals, but contributes largely to our pleasures.

The press must grow day in and day out — it is our Party's sharpest and most powerful weapon.

Whatever may be said about the power of the press, it is undeniable that it can set the entire public thinking and talking about any topic ...

Television is democracy at its ugliest.

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

The press doesn't just cover presidential campaigns, they influence them by making arbitrary decisions about who is 'top tier' and merits coverage.

I used to think the press was a necessary evil and now I don't think it is. I think it's something you choose.

Documentaries - my God, there is so much going on in our country and in the world today that every time you open the newspaper or turn on the radio or watch the news on TV there is another documentary subject. We're getting the headlines for a second, shaped by corporate delivery most of the time, but what's really the story there?

The press don't wake up in the morning simply to be a mouthpiece for pols - they're out to uncover and expose news. That often is at odds with what politicians are setting out to do - it's both symbiotic and antagonistic. They need each other, they work in concert with one another, they work against one another.

The bias of the media is neither liberal nor conservative but negative.

The newspapers, magazines and other journals of the country, it is safe to say, have shed and continue to shed, more light on the public and business affairs of, the nation than any other instrumentality of public; and since informed public opinion is the most potent of all restraints upon misgovernment, the suppression or abridgment of the publicity afforded by a free press cannot be regarded otherwise than with grave concern.

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

There is much to be said in favour of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.

It’s always difficult for a President to explain his policies through the filter of the media and the crises of the day.

The concept that the press is an organ of government policy dies hard.

How united would the United States be without its newspapers?

You cannot let America’s destiny be determined by a bunch of foreign journalists.