Franklin Foer Quotes

News isn't just what happens. It's what a fairly small group of people decide is news.

I run the Daily Express purely for propaganda and for no other purpose.

I have tried to write about this matter without any improper bias, but of course we are all cowards about newspapers who tyrannize over us all.

A handful of us determine what will be on the evening news broadcasts, or, for that matter, in the New York Times or Washington Post or Wall Street Journal. Indeed it is a handful of us with this awesome power.And those [news stories] available to us already have been culled and re-culled by persons far outside our control.

Very rarely are you going to see the large shareholder or CEO of a corporation march into a newsroom and say, "Cover this story, don't cover that." It's a much more subtle process. The professional code adapts, but what we try to see, is how commercial and corporate pressure shape both the professional code and the sorts of things that are considered legitimate journalism and illegitimate journalism.

I don't know how you can do it, if you don't recognition the media as a power center in America.

Television is democracy at its ugliest.

As long as Rupert Murdoch has owned it, the 'New York Post' has been defined by its shamelessness and total lack of interest in taking responsibility for its worst errors and poor judgment.

If there is a silver lining in the action of MSNBC against Keith Olbermann, it is that people will now pay more attention to the political role of corporate media in America.

The major networks, the cable networks, they're being prosecutors. They're judges and jurors and executioners. Well, c'mon, that's ridiculous. But they're doing it.

I think the media is a real demon.

Also, the commercial media in a superior position, really, to any other corporate lobby, because where would people hear about commercial media or corporate media criticism, where would they hear criticism of them other than in the commercial media?

People knew that Murdoch's media estate in the UK was too powerful and it was doing very unpleasant things.

All the news that fits we print.

Not every item of news should be published: rather those who control news policies endeavor to make every item of news serve a certain purpose.

The power is to set the agenda. What we print and what we don't print matter a lot.

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.

Arab media is market driven like the American media. It does not so much shape public opinion as much as it reflects it.

There is a power in our land, irresponsible, corrupt and malicious—‘the press,’ which has created the intense feelings of hostility that has arrayed the two parts of the country against each other, which must be curbed and brought within the just limits of reason and law, before we can have peace in America. We can deal with armies who have a visible and tangible existence, but it will require tact and skill and courage to clip the wings of this public enemy.

Media is totally Modi, Modi-media.

I am not afraid of mass media.

So great is society's demand for information that we can no longer say that all the news gathered is worthy of airing. Much of it is not.

I really am convinced that what is happening in media today is the result of the birth of conservative media and its rapid growth and ascension. It has destroyed the left's monopoly in media. When they had the monopoly, they could pretend that they were not what they are and get away with it. They could pretend to be objective. You know, the power of a monopoly is not just determining what stories you are going to cover, but what you don't cover is just as powerful.

I used to believe that we could change the media. I was as naive as anybody.

If I want to spend the rest of my life reading one day's output of information, which is about what it would take, OK fine. But I personally prefer calibration from an aggregator or newspaper, where the No. 1 story is one they consider important, [and] they're usually right.