Brian Stelter Quotes

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

I know certain techniques, such as a press release that looks like a newscast. So you use it because you want your man to win.

Politics is television and whoever masters it is likely to win.

The world of messaging is the world of campaign consultants, of politicians, who are like trained seals who are given their message and then they perform. I’m not into that.

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.

A dozen men in good suits and women in silk dresses will circulate smoothly among the reporters, spouting confident opinions. They won't be just press agents trying to impart a favorable spin to a routine release. They'll be the Spin Doctors, senior advisers to the candidates

I'm not a politician; I don't have a well-organised PR machine to craft my every word.

A dozen press agents working overtime can do terrible things to the human spirit.

As press secretary, I spent countless hours defending the administration from the podium in the White House briefing room.

In a lot of cases, as in Tom and Nicole's case, the tabloids were about to break the story, so they said just let the news out. And they called organizations such as ours.

I don't stage my own publicity.

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

Republicans have never been good at public relations.

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.

The generation of news by actions taken by the government becomes one weapon in a strained situation. The results, in my opinion, justify the methods we use… News generated by actions of the government as to content and timing are part of the arsenal of weaponry that a President has in application of military force and related forces to the solution of political problems, or to the application of international political pressure.

Every politician higher up than assistant water commissioner knows how to avoid tough questions [from reporters]: Don't answer them.

[Ronald Reagan] turned the White House into a soft focus TV studio.

Politicians generally don’t volunteer for press encounters they can’t control.

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

I have no more obligation to spin. When you’re in the White House, you spin.

I was asked to write a press briefing emphasizing the positive steps the administration had taken in the area and minimizing the negative ones. I was an Assistant to the President. I have done that for several Presidents. When you’re on the staff of the President of the United States you try and make things look as good as possible.

In order to govern you have to feed the news cycle

In politics, you don’t have to love the press; you don’t even have to like the press, but you sure as hell have to feed the press.

The 1934 Republican response to the Upton Sinclair campaign for California Governor marked a stunning advance in the art of public relations, in which advertising men now believed they could sell or destroy political candidates as they sold one brand of soap and defamed its competitor. In another twenty years, these techniques would spread East, achieve a new refinement, and begin to dominate the politics of the nation.