Media Control and Censorship
" ... so long as the media are in corporate
hands, the task of social change will be vastly more difficult,
if not impossible ..."
Robert McChesney, journalist and author
"As long as people are marginalized and
distracted [they] have no way to organize or articulate their
sentiments, or even know that others have these sentiments.
People assume that they are the only people with a crazy idea
in their heads. They never hear it from anywhere else. Nobody's
supposed to think that. ... Since there's no way to get together
with other people who share or reinforce that view and help you
articulate it, you feel like an oddity, an oddball. So you just
stay on the side and you don't pay any attention to what's going
on. You look at something else, like the Superbowl."
Noam Chomsky, American linguist and US media
and foreign policy critic
"You have presented to stations around
the world a model for freedom of speech and the unhindered availability
of information... You have shown that despite media monopolies
and manipulations it is possible to preserve a spirit of tolerance,
freedom and truth and to allow dissenting voices to be heard...
Your struggle to preserve your autonomy... has revealed an unexpected
similarity between the media in the US and Serbia today, the freedom
of speech is being stifled in a similar manner, journalists are
being .. intimidated and progressive radio stations are prevented
from operating. The character of media repression is virtually
the same under openly totalitarian dictatorships as it is under
democratic systems which are increasingly influenced by conservative
structures."
A message of solidarity from banned independent
radio station B92 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia to Radio KPFA in Berkeley
and Radio WBAI in New York, expressing support in their struggle
to preserve progressive community radio in the United States -
July 1999
" Any dictator would admire the uniformity
and obedience of the [U.S.] media."
Noam Chomsky, American linguist and US media
and foreign policy critic
*****
" I have the greatest admiration for
your propaganda. Propaganda in the West is carried out by experts
who have had the best training in the world -- in the field of
advertizing -- and have mastered the techniques with exceptional
proficiency ... Yours are subtle and persuasive; ours are crude
and obvious ... I think that the fundamental difference between
our worlds, with respect to propaganda, is quite simple. You tend
to believe yours ... and we tend to disbelieve ours. "
a Soviet correspondent based five years in the
U.S.
" I know of no country in which there
is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion
as in America. "
Alexis de Tocqueville, 1805 - 1859, French political
thinker and author of Democracy in America
"Newspapers are unable, seemingly, to
discriminate between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilization."
George Bernard Shaw, Irish playwight and critic,
1856-1950
*****
"There is no such thing, at this date
of the world's history, in America, as an independent press. The
business of the journalists is to destroy the truth, to lie outright,
to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell
his country and his race for his daily bread. We are the tools
and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping
jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities
and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual
prostitutes."
John Swinton, Chief of Staff New York Times at
New York Press Club, 1953
*****
"The opinion of 10,000 men is of no value
if none of them know anything about the subject."
Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor from 121-180 A.D. and Stoic philosopher
" ... the media in the United States
effectively represents the interests of corporate America, and
... the media elite are the watchdogs of what constitutes acceptable
ideological messages, the parameters of news and information content,
and the general use of media resources.
Peter Phillips, Project Censored, 1998
*****
" [The] media, our top elected official,
and our two dominant political parties rarely criticize the growing
power of large corporations because they are bankrolled by them."
Nancy Snow, author
*****
" The most dangerous criminal may be
the man gifted with reason, but with no morals. "
Martin Luther King, Jr.
*****
" Martin Luther King is the most notorious
liar in the country."
J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the FBI 1924-1972
"Basic civil liberties including the
right to life, liberty and the freedom of personal and political
expression, suffered a drastic setback in 1981. In more than a
dozen regional nations, even the most fundamental rights -- life
and the inviolability of the person -- were transgressed by the
government-condoned practice of harassing, torturing and murdering
political opponents of those in power ... These reverses can be
linked to policies adopted by the Reagan administration ... [which]
has allied the U.S. with the most violent regimes in the hemispere.
He [Reagan] has sanctioned atrocities and human rights abuses
by providing those governments with essentially unconditioned
U.S. support."
Council on Hemispheric Affairs, 1982
*****
"We have never interfered in the internal
government of a country and have no intention of doing so, never
have had any thought of that kind."
Ronald Reagan, 1982
*****
" Good journalism is being criminalized
or otherwise rendered perilous to its best practitioners. Attack
a government agency like the CIA, or a Fortune 500 member ...,
or the conduct of the military in Southeast Asia and you find
yourself in deep trouble, naked and often alone. "
Daniel Schorr, journalist
*****
" The owners of the Washington Post long
ago acknowledged that the Post is the government's voice to the
people. In 1981, Katherine Graham, who owns the Post and Newsweek
announced that her editors would "cooperate with the national
security interests." National security in this context means
"CIA.""
John Stockwell, former CIA official and author
*****
" Governments lie."
I.F. Stone, journalist and author
" The news and truth are not the same
thing. "
Walter Lippmann, American journalist, 1889-1974
*****
" The notion that journalism can regularly
produce a product that violates the fundamental interests of media
owners and advertisers ... is absurd."
Robert McChesney, journalist and author
" [The Laos operation] is something of
which we can be proud as Americans.
It has involved virtually no American casualties. What we are
getting for our money there ... is, I think, to use the old phrase,
very cost effective."
U. Alexis Johnson, US Under Secretary of State
in 1971 about American carpet-bombing of Laos which killed hundreds-of-thousands
of civilians
*****
"We [the U.S.] have over 200 incidents
in which we have put our troops into other countries to force
them to our will."
John Stockwell, former CIA official and author
" The corporate grip on opinion in the
United States is one of the wonders of the Western world. No First
World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its
media all objectivity - much less dissent. "
Gore Vidal, novelist and critic
*****
" There's a whole journalistic-industrial
complex dedicated to keeping newsprint, TV screens and radio waves
clean of destabilizing scoops damaging to corporations or the
state."
Alexander Cockburn, journalist
"The 'corporatization of America' during
the past century [has been] an attack on democracy."
Noam Chomsky, American linguist and US media
and foreign policy critic
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