Thomas Hodgskin Quotes

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.

The primary purpose of the media is to mobilize support for the controlling interests.

The Press has not only a great influence over our manners and morals, but contributes largely to our pleasures.

All over the world, wherever there are capitalists, freedom of the press means freedom to buy up newspapers, to buy writers, to bribe, buy and fake “public opinion” for the benefit of the bourgeoisie.

Public opinion can be influential, the media can be influential.

Because I live and work in Washington, D.C., I have a ringside seat at the world capital of The Persuasive Arts, or, as I like to call it, The Opinions Racket.

Then there is the newspaper press, that huge engine for making the political test final.

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.

The press must grow day in and day out — it is our Party's sharpest and most powerful weapon.

The press is our chief ideological weapon.

I think I could argue that the press has more impact on politics than corporations.

The front pages of The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times are very important in shaping what other people think. They're like writing a memo to the White House.

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

The newspapers of your country seem to be more powerful than the government.

Burke said there were three estates in Parliament; but in the reporter's gallery yonder, there sat a fourth estate more important far than they all.

The media can make or break an administration.

The Washington Post is the first and prime source of information for the national government.... It can come very close to setting the nation's agenda.

The press tends to reflect what's important to the country.

The freedom of the press throughout the world where the capitalists rule, is the freedom to buy up papers, the freedom to buy writers, to buy and manufacture public opinion in the interest of the capitalists.

Many newspapers have become players as well as spectators in the political debate.

A Marxist could not open a newspaper without finding on every page confirming evidence for his interpretation of history; not only in the news, but also in its presentation — which revealed the class bias of the paper — and especially of course what the paper did not say.

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.

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

You or any fair man, looking back on the history of our own country for the past forty years must admit, that the Press has gradually intensified he feelings of mutual jealousy and hatred between the North and the South till war not only resulted, but was bound to result. You see yet the Press of each Section, instead of healing the gap, is vigorously widening it.