Al Franken Quotes

I think there are a lot of reasons to be critical of the media in America.

I don't want the news to be patriotic. I don't want to see flags on the lapels of the anchors. I don't want any of that.

I think what irritates both conservatives and liberals alike is when news outlets pretend that they don't have an agenda but then clearly do, be it in the editorial decisions they make and the guests they have and the material that they cover.

For whatever reason, the mainstream media, for the most part, affixes itself to progressive or liberal propaganda.

The biased left-wing media does what it wants. That's not going to define me or hamper me.

The mainstream media has chosen their candidates and their issues, and they're not the same as the GOP's. They are going to be painted as the bad guys.

The Times has much less power than you think. I believe we attribute power to the media generally that it simply doesn't have. It's very convenient to blame the media, the same way we blame television for everything that's going wrong in society.

If there is a silver lining in the action of MSNBC against Keith Olbermann, it is that people will now pay more attention to the political role of corporate media in America.

This trend of reporting process over substance is unfortunate, if omnipresent. Even worse is the media's inability - or unwillingness - to fact-check Republicans who are angry about the Democrats trying to debate and vote on Iraq policy.

I think the media needs a little criticizing now, as it did in the '80s, don't you?

Mainstream media tend to just mouth the conventional wisdom, to see everything through the filter of right and left.

The biases the media has are much bigger than conservative or liberal. They're about getting ratings, about making money, about doing stories that are easy to cover.

All the media are horrible.

I've been interested in watching the level of conservative misinformation that circulates through the media.

There will always be a certain element of extremists on either side, left or right, who no mainstream news outlet is going to satisfy.

I don't think I'm an angry person. I think I'm a person who's angry. I'm angry at the Bush administration; I'm angry at the right wing media. And by that I don't mean the media is right wing. I mean, there is a part of the media that's not the mainstream media. That's Fox, that is 'The Wall Street Journal' editorial page.

I am not here to accuse the media of anything.

News represents another form of advertising, not liberal propaganda.

No, I do not identify with the right wing.

But instead, Democrats are so bent on seeing Republicans as a bunch of angry, right wing, intolerant, unreliable extremists that they have a track record of missing the mood of the country, especially the sentiment of people who don't wake up to 'The New York Times.'

While mainstream media is led by profit, ratings and popularist culture and filtered by the current political climate, Alternative Media is lead solely by the convictions of the campaign and film maker.

Thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative.

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

The Washington press corps is all too often the Praetorian Guard of the left.

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.