Media Distortion Quotes

When you're as famous as I am, stories take on a life of their own.

When distant and unfamiliar and complex things are communicated to great masses of people, the truth suffers a considerable and often a radical distortion.

Television and movies have short-circuited reality. I don't think a lot of people are entirely clear on what is real and what is on the screen.

We've all seen 'Network' and 'Wag the Dog,' but we were somehow insulated by the fact that those were just movies, fictions, and we could rest easy that the Real News doesn't operate that way. Well, it does - sometimes.

Arabs are a complete abstraction in the propaganda world and all the death and destruction is completely unreal to Americans.

The evil that men do lives on the front pages of greedy newspapers, but the good is oft interred apathetically inside.

In mainstream media, everything gets turned into a stereotype of ourselves.

Western media present events in Russia in a thoroughly negative light. Yes, we have problems, and these need to be covered. But the fact remains that there is a propaganda campaign being waged against Russia. And this is disturbing.

I think the media spends a lot of time fooling itself.

It doesn't matter what you do. In the end, you are going to be judged, and all the times that you're not at your most dignified are the ones that will be recalled in all their vivid, heartbreaking detail. And then of course these things will be distorted and exaggerated and replayed over and over, until eventually they turn into the essence of you: your cartoon.

When I read about myself in the media, even I don't recognize me. The myth of Kevin Mitnick is much more interesting than the reality of Kevin Mitnick. If they told the reality, no one would care.

The Russians were doing a lot of rotten things, you can point to them. But the idea that if you consider what Hans Morgenthau called "I called abuse of reality," the picture of the world was almost the opposite of what they presented. But somehow this sells and is continually repeated, at least in this kind of situation.

All you see on television are debased images.

I've been interviewed for hundreds of magazine articles, and they come out incredibly goofy about 90 percent of the time.

The mainline media attacks all conservatives, especially Christians, and distorts their policies and beliefs so that the local population is afraid to vote for them.

I've stopped watching TV news. They couldn't pay me enough money.

You have people talk about the media as a coequal branch when talking about Republicans. "You know, Republicans have to overcome the media, and then the Democrats." Wait a minute. Why should anybody have to overcome the media?

Almost everything I say, no matter how innocent my intentions are, seems to get sort of manipulated and sensationalized and turned into some ridiculous news story.

Journalists have misquoted people for so long–and quoted them out of context–that many people like to have their words on record [in writing]. I don’t want someone taking half a sentence or paraphrasing me… Just too much risk.

You do get certain publications in the States where, if things don't go according to plan, they flip the story and it becomes very negative.

Network news accustoms audiences to assertion not argument. Over time, it reinforces the notion that politics is about visceral identification and apposition, not complex problems and their solutions. ... sound bites aren't very helpful. They can tell a voter what a candidate believes, but not why. And many issues are too complex to be freeze dried into a slogan and a smile. ... What's lost in a world in which everything's an ad? Perhaps the country that created the assembly line has simply found a more efficient way to do politics.

The camera lies all the time; lies 24 times/second.

Don't ever believe what you see in films.

The foulest damage to our political life comes not from the 'secrets' which they hide from us, but from the little bits of half-truth and disinformation which they do tell us. These are already pre-digested, and then are sicked up as little gobbits of authorised spew. The columns of defense correspondents in the establishment sheets serve as the spittoons.

That comes from most people having an American film model in their heads which is nothing but a total illusionary masturbatory massage.