Press

Quotes about the press.

Quotes

Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe.
- Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Colonel Charles Yancey (6 January 1816) ME 14:384.

They have an engine called the Press whereby the people are deceived.
- C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength (1945)

An important thing to remember about the press is there is no ideological bias.
- Jon Meacham, quoted in Doro Bush, My Father, My President, p. 218. [1]

My friend Reg Murphy, now publisher of the Baltimore Sun, has a sign behind his desk advising those who would take on the press that it is never wise to do battle with anyone who buys ink by the barrel.
- Griffin B. Bell, Ronald J. Ostrow, Taking Care of The Law (1982), p. 205.

We must compel the governments of the goyim to take action in the direction favoured by our widely-conceived plan, already approaching the desired consummation, by what we shall represent as public opinion, secretly prompted by us through the means of that so-called "Great Power"—the Press, which, with a few exceptions that may be disregarded, is already entirely in our hands.
- The Protocols of the Meetings of the Learned Elders of Zion (1934) published by Sergei Nilus

If any paper should print in gigantic type, "The cholera has come," I believe half its readers would be in collapse before tea time, when if the announcement was in brevier no effect could be found.
- Abraham Oakey Hall, Welcoming speech to the New England Society, quoted in M. R. Werner, Tammany Hall, 1928, p. 213

Think of the press as a psychological warfare operation aimed at normal Americans and you won’t go far wrong.
- Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit, July 6, 2020

The press did not make us, the press cannot break us.
- Attributed to Robert Sobukwe by Kwame Ture in Black Power: Politics of Liberation in America. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. 10 November 1992. p. 194. ISBN 978-0-679-74313-2. Afterword

The Press today is an army with carefully organized arms and branches, with journalists as officers, and readers as soldiers. But here, as in every army, the soldier obeys blindly, and war-aims and operation-plans change without his knowledge. The reader neither knows, nor is allowed to know, the purposes for which he is used, nor even the role that he is to play. A more appalling caricature of freedom of thought cannot be imagined. Formerly a man did not dare to think freely. Now he dares, but cannot; his will to think is only a willingness to think to order, and this is what he feels as his liberty.
- Oswald Spengler (1923). The Decline of the West. George Allen & Unwin Ltd. pp. 375-76.

The capitalist press simply records history, it never makes it; only the masses make history!
- Kwame Ture, Black Power: Politics of Liberation in America. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. 10 November 1992. p. 194. ISBN 978-0-679-74313-2. Afterword

The capitalist press supports reform movements which forestall Revolution; these reform movements come to depend on the press and even tailor their activities to fit headlines. The capitalist press wants to intoxicate the masses with this reform movement. Intoxicated reform “leaders” believe that political power grows out of the lens of press cameras, and the more lenses, the more power. Just political power comes only from the organized masses.
- Kwame Ture, Black Power: Politics of Liberation in America. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. 10 November 1992. p. 194. ISBN 978-0-679-74313-2. Afterword

Well, I am reading more and enjoying it less—[laughter]—and so on, but I have not complained nor do I plan to make any general complaints. I read and talk to myself about it, but I don't plan to issue any general statement on the press. I think that they are doing their task, as a critical branch, the fourth estate. And I am attempting to do mine. And we are going to live together for a period, and then go our separate ways. [Laughter].
- John F. Kennedy, when asked to comment on the press in general, news conference, May 9, 1962. Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, 1962, p. 376 (1963).

To the press alone, chequered as it is with abuses, the world is indebted for all the triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression.
- James Madison, "Report on the Resolutions", in Gaillard Hunt, ed., The Writings of James Madison vol. 6 (1906), p. 389. This report of the resolutions of the Virginia House of Delegates in 1799 was submitted by a committee headed by Madison and is widely known as the Virginia Report of 1799.

Government has an obligation not to inhibit the collection and dissemination of news…. I'm convinced that if reporters should ever lose the right to protect the confidentiality of their sources then serious investigative reporting will simply dry up. The kind of resourceful, probing journalism that first exposed most of the serious scandals, corruption and injustice in our nation's history would simply disappear…. And let me tell you, reading about one's failings in the daily papers is one of the privileges of high office in this free country of ours.
- Nelson A. Rockefeller, governor of New York, speech to the Anti-Defamation League, Syracuse, New York, November 29, 1972, as reported by The New York Times, November 30, 1972, p. 1, 86.

Whenever the press quits abusing me I know I'm in the wrong pew. I don't mind it because when they throw bricks at me—I'm a pretty good shot myself and I usually throw 'em back at 'em.
- Harry S. Truman, speech at a dinner in his honor, Washington, D.C., February 22, 1958.—Text as recorded by The New York Times, February 23, 1958, p. 46.

In America the President reigns for four years, and Journalism governs for ever and ever.
- Oscar Wilde, "The Soul of Man Under Socialism", The Works of Oscar Wilde, ed. G. F. Maine, p. 1033 (1954).

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