Establishment Media Quotes

We must not let the panicky Wall Street wheeler-dealers and the Trump-hating establishment state media talk us into a recession. We must keep the focus on the real economy, not the fake economy.

The media, I think, wants Kerry to win. And I think they're going to portray Kerry and Edwards - I'm talking about the establishment media, not Fox - but they're going to portray - they're going to portray Kerry and Edwards as the young and dynamic and optimistic and all this. There's going to be this glow about them this summer, that is going to be worth - collective glow, the two of them, that's going to be worth maybe 15 points.

If establishment journalists were to replicate actual stenography, it would be an improvement on most of the work they produce.

There's a perennial debate about whether the propagandistic tripe produced by establishment media outlets is shaped more by evil or by stupidity. Personally, I think it's both: a healthy dose of each is needed. The system design is malicious, while those who serve as its public face are generally vacant.

Talk radio has made an enormous run around establishment media. But the Internet is making an end run around talk radio. Suddenly we're faced with an information age.

A common criticism of establishment journalists entails comparing them to stenographers, on the ground that most of them do little more than mindlessly write down and uncritically repeat what government officials say.

Whenever a journalist says to me, "Oh, you don't understand, I'm impartial, I'm objective," I know what he's saying. I can decode it immediately. It means he channels the official truth. Almost always. That protestation means he speaks for a consensual view of the establishment. This is internalized.

In Washington, no one believes anything unless it comes from 'The New Yorker,' 'New York Times' editorial page, or 'The Washington Post.'

If 'The New York Times' says it, it must be true.

I left the 'Trib' in 1970 with the feeling that I would never have a career in establishment media of any kind.

I think the press, by and large, is what we call "liberal". But of course what we call "liberal" means well to the right. "Liberal" means the "guardians of the gates". So the New York Times is "liberal" by, what's called, the standards of political discourse, New York Times is liberal, CBS is liberal. I don't disagree. I think they're moderately critical at the fringes. They're not totally subordinate to power, but they are very strict in how far you can go. And in fact, their liberalism serves an extremely important function in supporting power.