Karl Kraus Quotes

What you say about the newspapers is very true ... They are indeed a curious compound of truth and untruth. I am so used to newspaper nonsense and attacks that I do not mind it in the least....

Asking the question whether the mainstream media has a liberal or conservative bias is like asking whether al Qaeda uses too much oil in their hummus. I might think they use a little bit too much oil; some people might think it's a little dry. But the problem with al Qaeda is they want to kill us. And the problem with the mainstream media is that it has these other biases that are much more important.

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

I never, ever have seen media this way. It's almost indescribable. Making up stories, refusing to run real stories. It's making themselves look like utter fools. There's no journalism, there is no media. There's pure, full-fledged advocacy here.

The second is the damage to the credibility and independence of a free press which may be caused by covert relationships with the U.S. journalists and media organizations.

The Press, which is mostly controlled by vested interests, has an excessive influence on public opinion.

To say that the newspaper press represents public opinion is to administer insult to intelligent men. It is the property of speculators, political leaders, large contractors and railway directors.

Newspapers form public opinion, but public opinion also influences newspapers. The general masses are not like horses that can be tamed and trained to do their masters bidding.

Editorialists who tell downright lies in order to advance their own agendas do more to discredit the press than all the censors in the world.

Diplomats lie to journalists, then believe the headlines.

… there was partisanship in the newspapers …. Newspapers were not neutral. Newspapers were the political vehicle of a particular group and sometimes they were the cultural vehicle as well. It is also important to keep in mind that some of the newspaper editors were very friendly with … political leaders

The media. It sounds like a convention of spiritualists.

We probably give newspaper columnists too much weight.

That's what media do. They make you out to be a monster.

The media do strange things.

It's the media who love statistics.

The primacy of preaching over reporting inevitably leads journalism down a path of hyperbole, distortion and outright fabrication.

The hired journalist, I thought, ought to realize that he is partly in the entertainment business and partly in the advertising business - advertising either goods, or a cause, or a government. He just has to make up his mind whom he wants to entertain, and what he wants to advertise.

This impressed me when I was the editor of the Sunday Times [of London] - we had the "Bloody Sunday" killings of 13 unarmed civilians by British paratroopers. We interviewed 500 people for our report, and not one of them could give us a total picture of what was happening. It was like the Rashomon effect multiplied a million times. For a website or even a newspaper to be a collector of information flow is not the highest form of journalism.

Journalism is kind of scary and of it we should be wary.

The press is, almost without exception, corrupt.

The media is running the entire left wing of America. But I think they are disgusting more and more people all over this country. I think they are just turning people off, and I don't think they yet have any idea of the damage they are doing to the Democrat Party, which is where people show their disgust with this.

The best I can hope for is that I might provoke a water cooler argument between you and somebody else. But it is not journalism. It doesn't have the rigor of journalism. It doesn't have the proof positive that facts provide. So it can be readily dismissed as mere propaganda. But I can certainly reach more people.

There are good reasons why everybody should heed politicians' advise not to believe the media. One of the best is that the media report what politicians say.

Here in the United States, our profession is much maligned, people simply don't trust or like journalists anymore and that's sad.