Pauline Kael Quotes

I think everyone knows the news has become ridiculous. It's entertainment driven.

I don't believe what the papers are saying They're just out to capture my dime, Exaggerating this, exaggerating that.

Sensationalism sells: Don't let the facts get in the way of a good story.

Yellow journalism is defined by prominent headlines that screamed excitement, often about comparatively unimportant news; a lavish use of pictures, many of them without significance; faked interviews and stories; a Sunday supplement and color comics; and a more or less ostentatious sympathy with the 'underdog,' with campaigns against abuses suffered by the common people.

… yellow journalism

There are an awful lot of people making lots of money promoting fear. Their hot microphones have flamethrowers.

The American media wants to pump you full of fear.

I think yellow journalism is something that appears everywhere, in the underdeveloped and developed worlds alike.

Large corporations have the ability to distract people with controversy that just distracts people from what's great about the movie or what works about the movie.

I think the media is a fear-mongering operation. They love to rile their viewership up or to scare them.

Negativity sells.

As I discovered in my media manipulations, the information that finds us online - what spreads - is the worst kind. It raised itself above the din not through its value, importance, or accuracy but through the opposite: through slickness, titillation, and polarity.

Of course, formulas always existed in journalism. When I was just getting into the business, 'Time' and 'Newsweek' knew if they could put Jesus' face on the cover that it would do really well on the newsstands. So every year, they would put Jesus' face on the newsstand. There was a formula there.

..bear in mind that, in general, it is the object of our newspapers rather to create a sensation-to make a point-than to further the cause of truth." Dupin in "The Mystery of Marie Roget

What we see is what they're trying to sell us.

It is important to bear in mind that political campaigns are designed by the same people who sell toothpaste and cars.

Television is never more false than when it's openly sincere.

Don't you understand anything? Isn't it absolutely essential to keep a fierce Left and a fierce Right, both on their toes and each terrified of the other? That's how we get things done. Any opposition to the N.I.C.E. is represented as a Left racket in the Right papers and a Right racket in the Left papers. If it's properly done, you get each side outbidding the other in support of us-to refute the enemy slanders. Of course we're non-political. The real power always is.

Ads push the principle of noise all the way to the plateau of persuasion. They are quite in accord with the procedures of brainwashing.

The press is like a woman: sublime when it lies, it will not let go until it has forced you to believe it. The public, like a foolish husband, always succumbs.

News is what people want to keep hidden and everything else is publicity.

The goal is to keep the bewildered herd bewildered. It's unnecessary for them to trouble themselves with what's happening in the world. In fact, it's undesirable - if they see too much of reality they may set themselves to change it.

The media—stenographers to power.

Governments don't want a population capable of critical thinking, they want obedient workers, people just smart enough to run the machines and just dumb enough to passively accept their situation.You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own, and control the corporations. They've long since bought, and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear.