William H. McRaven Quotes

The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!

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

There is nothing more important to a democracy than an active and engaged press.

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

I have never quite grasped the worry about the power of the press. After all, it speaks with a thousand voices, in constant dissonance.

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

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.

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

All the media are horrible.

If I had my choice I would kill every reporter in the world, but I am sure we would be getting reports from Hell before breakfast.

Media is just a word that has come to mean bad journalism.

If this newspaper pestilence shall continue for fifty years more, the intelligence of our people will be destroyed.... Hold fast and zealously, therefore, to the slogan I now ask you to make your own: hatred and contempt, death and destruction, of the press of today.

To-day a democrat of the old school would demand, not freedom for the press, but freedom from the press

There are those who blame the Press, but in this I think they are mistaken. The Press is such as the public demands, and the public demands bad newspapers because it has been badly educated.

Whoever said I hated the media?

If you don't trust the media, they are not going to trust you, and if they don't trust you, it's hard for the public to trust you.

The democratic system is challenged by the failure in television because our evening news programmes have gone for an attempt to entertain as much as to inform in the desperate fight for ratings.

We need the media as the foundation of functioning institutions.

When you lose power, then all of a sudden, the press are lions. When you have power, the press are lambs.

Yes, Barack Obama had his clashes with the press. I witnessed those first-hand covering the second term of his administration. But we did not have Barack Obama on almost a weekly basis referring to the press as the enemy of the people and accusing reporters of treason and calling legitimate stories fake news.

A functional media is as important to democratic freedom as voting.

The job of the press is to encourage debate, not to supply the public with information.

Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play.

The media has become more forceful, has begun to recognize its traditional historic role and act on it, and truth is infectious.

I have always been of the opinion that the right kind of journalism is a critical part of our democracy.