Mass media

"Rock music is a greater influence over the souls of men than primitive Christianity." John Denver

"The most dangerous Weapons of Mass Destruction are the Mass Media. For they destroy the people's spirit, creativity and courage, replacing them by fear, mistrust, guilt and self-doubt." M.A.Verick

"I have spent many years loathing journalism and the intellectual corruption that emanates from it with all the strength of my soul." Karl Kraus

"What you find in people's minds today is often not reality at all, but a manufactured reality constructed by the media" Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann

"Public opinion is influenced by the media and the media are in the hands of those who rule and those who rule favor those who say what is convenient for them and erase everything that does not suit them. So public opinion is, above all, media opinion." José Luis Sampedro Sáez

"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. …We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. …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…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind." Edward Bernays

"The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western world. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity – much less dissent. Of course, it is possible for any citizen with time to spare, and a canny eye, to work out what is actually going on, but for the many there is not time, and the network news is the only news even though it may not be news at all but only a series of flashing fictions…" Gore Vidal

"The current moguls understand that true media power lies not in firing up our outrage, as Hearst did, but in befuddling it or tranquilizing it with new toys. The idea is to render us passive so that they can exercise their power to sell us a bunch of stuff we mostly don't need and mostly don't want." Richard Schickel

"America’s journalists are not 'newshounds'. They are nothing more than salesclerks, hocking the products their employers want to sell. The pretty faces that now function as most television news anchors are no different than the pretty models used to sell other products. The American “free” press is comprised of nothing more than a number of retail outlets which sell stories slanted to please their target audiences. As such, they exist merely to sell snake oil." John Kozy

"Society sees nothing because it is kept in a state of deep hypnosis. Never before have people been manipulated as much as they are now. A person is given no chance to pause and understand what is happening. Endless series, each dumber than the last, vulgar pop music, lustful or aggressive films that gently influence the subconscious, foster a spirit of selfishness and violence. An ordinary person quickly becomes a principle-less animal living an absolutely meaningless life." Sergei Petrowitsch Kapiza

"Now “public opinion” stood out as a force that must be managed, and not through clever guesswork but by experts trained to do that all-important job." Edward Bernays

"The systematic study of mass psychology revealed to students the potentialities of invisible government of society by manipulation of the motives which actuate man in the group." Edward Bernays

"The public relations counsel must deal with the fact that persons who have little knowledge of a subject almost invariably form definite and positive judgments upon that subject." Edward Bernays

"Totalitarian systems have always been maintained primarily by systematic indoctrination and propaganda, injected into the population on a daily basis via mass media (without mass media, it is not possible to generate such long-lasting mass formation as that which gave rise to Stalinism and Nazism). This way, the population is literally kept on the vibrational frequency of the voice of totalitarian leaders." Mattias Desmet