TRUTH-TELLERS

"Many people, especially ignorant people, want to punish you for speaking the truth, for being correct.
Never apologize for being correct, or for being years ahead of your time.
If you're right and you know it, speak your mind.
Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is still the truth."

Mahatma Gandhi

TRUTH-TELLERS 25

INDEPENDENT VOICES COMMITTED TO THE TRUTH

John Perkins / Bill Sardi

"Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the U.S. media."

Noam Chomsky

Azikiwe Abayomi / Sam Husseini / Jeff Huber

"Western corporations own the media, and their advertising makes the industry profitable. In this sense, the media cannot fulfill the function of watchdog of power, because in fact it is power."

Jonathan Cook, 2011

Gary Leupp / Tony Platt / Jim Lobe / Mohsen Abdelmoumen

"You're never going to get any truth from us [television]. We'll tell you anything you want to hear; we lie like hell... We'll tell you any shit you want to hear. We deal in *illusions*, man! None of it is true! But you people sit there, day after day, night after night, all ages, colors, creeds... We're all you know. You're beginning to believe the illusions we're spinning here. You're beginning to think that the tube is reality, and that your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you! You dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube, you even *think* like the tube! This is mass madness."

Howard Beale, in the movie 'Network', 1976

Khaled Iskef / Gearold O Colmain / Christian Fuchs / Christoph Germann

"Good journalism is getting the best obtainable version of the truth."

Carl Bernstein, 2015

Eric Margolis / Meg Kinnard / Arabi Souri / Chris Melidis

"Our Mainstream News Media presents the clearest danger to our Liberty and Freedom, and if they don't start reporting the news, not propaganda, the ability of the American public to remain an "informed public" is in danger of falling into the pitfalls that are usually associated when a communist / authoritarian / fascist government controls the news media."

William Cormier, 2010

Andrea Germanos / Bill Boyarsky / Thom Hartmann

"There is no such a thing in America as an independent press, unless it is out in country towns. You are all slaves. You know it, and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to express an honest opinion. If you expressed it, you would know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid $150 for keeping honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for doing similar things. If I should allow honest opinions to be printed in one issue of my paper, I would be like Othello before twenty-four hours: my occupation would be gone. The man who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the street hunting for another job. The business of a New York journalist is to distort 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, or for what is about the same - his salary. You know this, and I know it; and what foolery to be toasting an 'Independent Press! We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are jumping-jacks. They pull the string and we dance. Our time, our talents, our lives, our possibilities, are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes."

John Swinton (1829-1901) - American journalist and newspaper publisher

"The sad truth appears to be that the Washington Post can no longer be counted on to be anything like an honest broker, especially when it comes to issues near and dear to the hearts of neocons. Rather the Post's role is now to set the parameters for whatever debate the neocons find acceptable."

Robert Parry, 2009

"The last idea that ever occurs to mainstream media stars is that there is anything remotely wrong with the Establishment of which they are such integral parts (and which they still claim with a straight face to scrutinize)."

Glenn Greenwald, 2009

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