Alan Gerry Quotes

I think democracy's undermined when those who own newspapers fill them with trivia rather than real issues.

For governments at war, the media is an instrument of war or an element in war that is to be controlled.

Propaganda in the ordinary sense of the term plays a less important part in a consumer society, where people greet all official pronouncements with suspicion.

The press is our chief ideological weapon.

The real violence is committed in the writing of history, the records of the legal system, the reporting of news, through the manipulation of social contracts, and the control of information.

Media is extraordinarily important and is an extraordinarily powerful tool. There's a reason that the first things that a rebellion or revolt will take is the media. The story you transmit is the story that becomes a given, or the narrative of a country and people.

Whoever controls the media, controls the mind.

Power in America today is control of the means of communication.

... infiltrate and neutralize the mainstream American media.

The strategies and assumptions [of the propaganda model] are fundamentally contrary to a democratic model.... The goal of the propaganda model is simply to achieve efficient indoctrination, and it therefore tends to regard the assumptions of the democratic model as inconvenient obstacles to efficient communication.

The press ... is but the servant of human intellect and its ministry is for good or evil, according to the character of those who direct it. The press is a mill that grinds all that is put into its hopper. Fill the hopper with poisoned grain and it will grind it to meal, but there is death in the bread.

The nation whose population depends on the explosively compressed headline service of television news can expect to be exploited by the demagogues and dictators who prey upon the semi-informed.

The state must not ... let itself be confused by the drivel about so-called "freedom of the press," ... it must make sure of this instrument of popular education, and place it in the service of the state.

We are in a battle, and more than half of this battle is taking place in the battlefield of the media

The hand that rules the press, the radio, the screen, and the far spread magazine, rules the country.

The ones who are the smartest are the ones who use us. In other words, they understand the relationship between the press and leaders.

The Russians know that well executed disinformation, when exercised tactically, can quickly metastasize.

The press today is an army with carefully organized weapons, the journalists its officers, the readers its soldiers. The reader neither knows nor is supposed to know the purposes for which he is used and the role he is to play.

It is the emergence of mass media which makes possible the use of propaganda techniques on a societal scale.

The world is a complex place, and the influence of the media in its representation and its power of communication and interpretation is a remarkable amplifier of emotions, and of illusions.

Most of the press is in league with government, or with the status quo.

You have to be down here in the States to realize just how tightly controlled the corporate media is and how much they practise Soviet-style censorship through creative omission.

In any country, in any city, there will be political influence on what is said, what kind of images are to be projected and, yes, of course artists can be and are influenced by politicians.

All governments in all wars have used all the means at their disposal to put their own motives, decisions and actions, and the actions of their military forces, in the best possible light.

The genius of David Petraeus has always been his masterful manipulation of the media.