The press in this country is now and always has been so thoroughly dominated by the wealthy few of the country that it cannot be depended upon to give the great masses of the people that correct information concerning political, economical and social subjects which it is necessary that the mass of people shall have in order that they shall vote and in all ways act in the best way to protect themselves from the brutal force and chicanery of the ruling and employing class.
- E.W. Scripps (newspaper publisher ca 1900 in memorandum sent to his editorial executives)

The mass media become the authority at any given moment for what is true and what is false, what is reality and what is fantasy, what is important and what is trivial. There is no greater force in shaping the public mind; even brute force triumphs only by creating an accepting attitude toward the brutes.
-Ben Bagdikian (The Media Monopoly)

An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery. A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself.
- Joseph Pulitzer

In an authoritarian society there is a ministry, or a commissar, or a directorate that controls what everybody will see and hear. We call that a dictatorship. Here we have a handful of very powerful corporations led by a handful of very powerful men and women who control everything we see and hear beyond the natural environment and our own families. That's something which surrounds us every day and night. If it were one person we'd call that a dictatorship, a ministry of information.
- Ben Bagdikan

"Those who manipulate the organized habits and opinions of the masses constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of the country....It remains a fact that in almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons....It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world....As civilization has become more complex, and as the need for invisible government has been increasingly demonstrated, the technical means have been invented and developed by which opinion may be regimented."
- Edward Bernays in his book "Propaganda" (1928) . Bernays was Sigmund Freud's nephew and chief advisor to William Paley, who started CBS in 1928

"There is no such thing at this date of the world's history in America as an independent press. You know it, and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write his honest opinion, and if you did, you know beforehand it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things. and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allow my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before 24 hours, my occupation would be gone. The business of the journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it, and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press? We are the tools and the vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks. They pull the strings, and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes."
- John Swinden, head of the New York Times, when asked to toast an independent press in a gathering at the National Press Club

Also see: media control and censorship

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