Media Manipulation Quotes

“Until you realize how easy it is for your mind to be manipulated, you remain the puppet of someone else's game.”
― Evita Ochel

“People will always try to scare you into things. Scare you away from things. Scare you into not wanting things you can't help wanting. You can't be afraid.”
― Megan Abbott, Dare Me

“Manipulating the media is akin to poisoning a nation’s water supply – it affects all of our lives in unimaginable ways.”
― Lance Morcan, The Orphan Conspiracies: 29 Conspiracy Theories from The Orphan Trilogy

“There was a time when we used to have opinions, just humble opinions. Now everything seems to be a question of life and death. We defend, we abuse, we call names, we shout....is it because every idiot in town suddenly found a voice through social media or are intelligent people getting dumber trying to defend arguments which an idiot won't understand. I don't belong to either so I just wonder...”
― EverSkeptic

“Cinema, radio, television, magazines are a school of inattention: people look without seeing, listen in without hearing”
― Robert Bresson

“(Talking about the movement to deny the prevalence and effects of adult sexual exploitation of children)
So what does this movement consist of? Who are the movers and shakers? Well molesters are in it, of course. There are web pages telling them how to defend themselves against accusations, to retain confidence about their ‘loving and natural’ feelings for children, with advice on what lawyers to approach, how to complain, how to harass those helping their children. Then there’s the Men’s Movements, their web pages throbbing with excitement if they find ‘proof’ of conspiracy between feminists, divorcing wives and therapists to victimise men, fathers and husbands.
Then there are journalists. A few have been vitally important in the US and Britain in establishing the fightback, using their power and influence to distort the work of child protection professionals and campaign against children’s testimony. Then there are other journalists who dance in and out of the debates waggling their columns behind them, rarely observing basic journalistic manners, but who use this debate to service something else – a crack at the welfare state, standards, feminism, ‘touchy, feely, post-Diana victimhood’. Then there is the academic voice, landing in the middle of court cases or inquiries, offering ‘rational authority’. Then there is the government. During the entire period of discovery and denial, not one Cabinet minister made a statement about the prevalence of sexual abuse or the harm it caused.
Finally there are the ‘retractors’. For this movement to take off, it had to have ‘human interest’ victims – the accused – and then a happy ending – the ‘retractors’. We are aware that those ‘retractors’ whose parents trail them to newspapers, television studios and conferences are struggling. Lest we forget, they recanted under palpable pressure.”
― Beatrix Campbell, Stolen Voices: The People and Politics Behind the Campaign to Discredit Childhood Testimony

“Today a story is not told it's sold.”
― Amit Abraham

“Murder cases are like cancer cells. Once they get their hooks into you, the pain and misery just keep on spreading. Whether the killer gets caught or the investigation is brought to a successful conclusion doesn't make any difference; it's almost impossible to stop the advance of the disease.”
― Keigo Higashino, A Death in Tokyo

“The powerful can overpower the power of the pen but then they cannot write with water.”
― Amit Abraham

“There is a gulf between the image and reality of the punishment bureaucracy. Copaganda creates that gulf. It is the system of government and news media propaganda that promotes mass incarceration, justifies the barbarities and profits that accompany it, and distorts our sense of what threatens us and what keeps us safe.”
― Alec Karakatsanis, Copaganda: How Police and the Media Manipulate Our News

“The first job of copaganda is to narrow our conception of threat. Rather than the bigger threats to our safety caused by people with power, we narrow our conception to crimes committed by the poorest, most vulnerable people in our society.”
― Alec Karakatsanis, Copaganda: How Police and the Media Manipulate Our News

“The second job of copaganda is to manufacture crises and panics about this narrow category of threats.”
― Alec Karakatsanis, Copaganda: How Police and the Media Manipulate Our News

“Copaganda leaves the public in a vague state of fear. It manufactures suspicions against poor people, immigrants, and racial minorities rather than, say, bankers, pharmaceutical executives, fraternity brothers, landlords, employers, and polluters.”
― Alec Karakatsanis, Copaganda: How Police and the Media Manipulate Our News

“The third job of copaganda is to convince the public to spend more money on the punishment bureaucracy by framing police, prosecutors, probation, parole, and prisons as effective solutions to interpersonal harm. Copaganda links safety to the things the punishment bureaucracy does, while downplaying the connection between safety and the material, structural conditions of people's lives.”
― Alec Karakatsanis, Copaganda: How Police and the Media Manipulate Our News

“Cultural copaganda is all around us--from the CIA , starting in the 1950s funding projects like the Iowa Writers' Workshop or fronting literary magazines to influence modern journalism and fiction writing, to the DEA paying Hollywood in the 1990s to insert drug war propaganda into popular television shows, to the vast array of police and military consultants who shape every fictional TV series, podcast, or movie that touches on crime. Shows like COPS and Law & Order have done a lot to distort society's understanding of what the punishment bureaucracy does.”
― Alec Karakatsanis, Copaganda: How Police and the Media Manipulate Our News

“The entire genre of police procedurals mythologizes punishment bureaucrats and the allegedly sophisticated technologies they wield. And it's not just Hollywood--fictional copaganda planned and paid for by the police and their industry allies is on TikTok and Youtube, and it's behind many community groups, online posts, neighborhood listserv emails, and charitable campaigns that seem genuine to the unassuming public.”
― Alec Karakatsanis, Copaganda: How Police and the Media Manipulate Our News

“The concept and terminology of "mugging" as opposed to, say, "robbery" was created as part of the panic, even though there was no evidence that this ill-defined activity was increasing. This is similar to the creation of the term "carjacking" in Detroit in the early 1990s.”
― Alec Karakatsanis, Copaganda: How Police and the Media Manipulate Our News

“On the day Chicago police murdered Laquan McDonald, a seventeen-year-old Black teenager, in 2014, Chicago cops had six full-time public relations employees. As the city fought in court to keep evidence of the child's murder secret and then later to control the uproar when a judge ordered it to release a video of the shooting, Chicago increased its police budget to pay for twenty-five full-time positions devoted to manipulating public information. The 2024 budget funded fifty-five.

Chicago is not alone. Cities across the country spend enormous amounts on police PR, and even elected officials are often kept in the dark about it.”
― Alec Karakatsanis, Copaganda: How Police and the Media Manipulate Our News

“Police employing video propagandists has become more common after the murder of George Floyd.”
― Alec Karakatsanis, Copaganda: How Police and the Media Manipulate Our News

“If you're an amateur, professional, or aspiring journalist in any city in the U.S., a good story for you would be to dig into the budget and number of employees that your local police department devotes to all forms of public relations. There's a reason they try to hide it.”
― Alec Karakatsanis, Copaganda: How Police and the Media Manipulate Our News

“Copaganda obscures the active role police play in doing bad things. Many people have criticized the police-invented term "officer-involved shooting" because it obscures who is responsible.”
― Alec Karakatsanis, Copaganda: How Police and the Media Manipulate Our News

“The Lie said to the Truth-
"Let's take a bath together,
the well water is very nice.

The Truth, still suspicious,
tested the water and found out
it really was nice.

So they got naked and bathed.

But suddenly, the Lie leapt out of the water
and fled, wearing the clothes of the Truth.
The Truth, furious, climbed out of the well
to get her clothes back.

But the World, upon seeing the naked Truth,
looked away, with anger and contempt.

Poor Truth returned to the well and disappeared
forever, hiding her shame.

Since then, the Lie runs around the world,
dressed as the Truth, and society is very happy.
Because the world has no desire to know
the naked Truth.”
― Jean-Léon Gérome, Jean-Léon Gérôme - Paintings & Drawings

“Monarchies, dynasties, fairytales ... there is a fine line between these, Harry. The public know our names, they know our faces ... they know our stories – but that is all they are. You see, the media tells its tales about love and patriotism and duty, and that is what the people see, obligingly and obediently.”
― Sid Ishun, Harry Windzor and the Stone of Scone: A Potter Parody and Prince Harry Satire

“The irony is that when you set out to remove bias you use your own possibly unconscious biases in deciding what's harmful and what should be done about it.”
― James Rickards, MoneyGPT: AI and the Threat to the Global Economy

“People deserve real reports, real numbers, and real thoughts. Even if it means swimming against the tide.”
― HAZEM ABDELMOWLA

“While much of the media is driven by social media "clicks", the alphabet soup continuously endeavors to protect democrats by consistently complimenting them, and blaming republicans at every turn.”
― Alex Mel, Democrats and Republicans

“According to Terry Nichols, that winter of 1995, in Junction City, Timothy McVeigh accidentally let slip his FBI handler’s name: “Larry Potts.” Potts, the demoted former FBI deputy director, would surely have outraged McVeigh for his prominent roles in the FBI sieges at Ruby Ridge and Waco. Potts had set the rules of engagement that led to the horrendous sniper killing of Vicki Weaver on her cabin porch in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, as she held her newborn baby in her arms. Then at Waco, Potts had toured the scene late in the FBI’s long siege and recommended the attorney general approve the deadly tear gas raid that ended the Texas standoff with scores of deaths.

“McVeigh said he believed Potts was manipulating him and forcing him to go off script, which I understood meant to change the target of the bombing,” Nichols said. “That was the only time I ever heard McVeigh refer to Larry Potts in that context.”
― Margaret Roberts, Blowback: The Untold Story of the FBI and the Oklahoma City Bombing

“I use the term "punishment bureaucracy" instead of "criminal justice system" because it is a more accurate and less deceptive way to describe the constellation of public and private institutions that develop, enforce, and profit from criminal law.”
― Alec Karakatsanis, Copaganda: How Police and the Media Manipulate Our News

“The twentieth century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy. There have been two principal aspects to the growth of democracy in this century: the extension of popular franchise (i.e. the right to vote) and the growth of the union movement. These developments have presented corporations with potential threats to their power from the people at large (i.e. from public opinion) and from organized labour. American corporations have met this threat by learning to use propaganda, both inside and outside the corporation, as an effective weapon for managing governments and public opinion. They have thereby been able to subordinate the expression of democratic aspirations and the interests of larger public purposes to their own narrow corporate purposes. Corporate propaganda directed outwards, that is, to the public at large, has two main objectives: to identify the free-enterprise system in popular consciousness with every cherished value, and to identify interventionist governments and strong unions (the only agencies capable of checking the complete domination of society by the corporations) with tyranny, oppression and even subversion. [..] Corporate propaganda directed inwards, that is, to employees of the corporation itself, has the purpose of weakening the links between union members and their unions."
(the last part is later phrased: "..directed to a corporation’s own employees and commonly constituting a kind of battle with unions for the minds of the workforce.")”
― Alex Carey, Taking the Risk Out of Democracy: Corporate Propaganda versus Freedom and Liberty

“Source: The Daily Mail, they heard it through the grapevine, so it must be true”
― Ellie Fearn, You've Already Arrived