Free Press Quotes

A free press is one where it's ok to state the conclusion you're led to by the evidence. ~ Bill Moyers

In Iran the whole reform and democracy movement has been based on the emerging free press. ~ Christiane Amanpour

The second is the damage to the credibility and independence of a free press which may be caused by covert relationships with the U.S. journalists and media organizations. ~ Frank Church

The restoration of free speech, free association and free press is almost the whole Swaraj. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

I love this country. I loved it the first time I came here, back in 1963. I love it because it's free. My mother escaped from Nazi Germany; the rest of her family never made it. The first thing Hitler did was take over the press and make it subservient to the government. Lenin did the same." Jasper had drunk a few glasses of wine, and as a result he was a shade more candid. "America is free because it has disrespectful newspapers and television shows to expose and shame presidents who fuck the Constitution up the ass." He raised his glass. "Here's to the free press. Here's to disrespect. And God bless America. ~ Ken Follett

A free press is one that prints a dictator's speech but doesn't have to. ~ Laurence J. Peter

There is no more important struggle for American democracy than ensuring a diverse, independent and free media. Free Press is at the heart of that struggle. ~ Bill Moyers

A free press is equally free to print the truth or ignore it, as it chooses. ~ T.R. Fehrenbach

Their constant yelping about a free press means, with a few honorable exceptions, freedom to peddle scandal, crime, sex, sensationalism, hate, innuendo and the political and financial uses of propaganda. A newspaper is a business out to make money through advertising revenue. That is predicated on the circulation and you know what circulation depends on. ~ Raymond Chandler

Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one. ~ A.J. Liebling

It must be remembered that at that epoch the police was not precisely at its ease; the free press embarrassed it; several arbitrary arrests denounced by the newspapers, had echoed even as far as the Chambers, and had rendered the Prefecture timid. Interference with individual liberty was a grave matter. The police agents were afraid of making a mistake; the prefect laid the blame on them; a mistake meant dismissal. ~ Victor Hugo

Free press key to good governance ~ Anonymous

A free press is the greatest guarantee of a free society. We must keep it alive. We have to tolerate obnoxious opinions. But I don't want only opinions. I want facts. ~ Anthony S. Pitch

Millions like me in Russia want a free press, the rule of law, social justice, and free and fair elections. My new job is to fight for those people and to fight for these fundamental rights. ~ Garry Kasparov

The press doesn't stop publishing, by the way, in a fascist escalation; it simply watches what it says. That too can be an incremental process, and the pace at which the free press polices itself depends on how journalists are targeted. ~ Naomi Wolf

We live in what is called a democracy, rule by the majority of the people. A fine ideal if it could be made to work. The people elect, but the party machines nominate, and the party machines to be effective must spend a great deal of money. Somebody has to give it to them, and that somebody, whether it be an individual, a financial group, a trade union or what have you, expects some consideration in return. What I and people of my kind expect is to be allowed to live our lives in decent privacy. I own newspapers, but I don't like them. I regard them as a constant menace to whatever privacy we have left. Their constant yelping about a free press means, with a few honorable exceptions, freedom to peddle scandal, crime, sex, sensationalism, hate, innuendo, and the political and financial uses of propaganda. A newspaper is a business out to make money through advertising revenue. That is predicated on its circulation and you know what the circulation depends on. ~ Raymond Chandler

I am unable to watch the Olympics due to the blustering jingoism that drenches the event. Has England ever been quite so foul with patriotism? The 'dazzling royals' have, quite naturally, hi-jacked the Olympics for their own empirical needs, and no oppositional voice is allowed in the free press. ~ Morrissey

We look forward to analyzing and working with legislation that will make - it would hope - put a free press's mind at ease that you're not being denied information you shouldn't see. ~ George W. Bush

(It took Dewey only a few years to shift from responsible intellectual of World War I to "anarchist of the lecture-platform," denouncing the "un-free press" and questioning "how far genuine intellectual freedom and social responsibility are possible on any large scale under the existing economic regime. ~ Noam Chomsky

The theory of the free press is not that the truth will be presented completely or perfectly in any one instance, but that the truth will emerge from free discussion ~ E. E. Cummings

Famines are easy to prevent if there is a serious effort to do so, and a democratic government, facing elections and criticisms from opposition parties and independent newspapers, cannot help but make such an effort. Not surprisingly, while India continued to have famines under British rule right up to independence ... they disappeared suddenly with the establishment of a multiparty democracy and a free press. ... a free press and an active political opposition constitute the best early-warning system a country threaten by famines can have ~ Amartya Sen

The media, like anything else, can be bought. Everything, it seems, has its price. Even the free press. ~ Lance Morcan

The purpose of a free press, in which I believe believe it or not, is so that people can make rational decisions in a democracy. They'd already perverted the process so bad that was hard, but the point is valid. ~ John Ringo

The government and the people are under a moral necessity of acting together; a free press compels them to bend to one another. ~ James Mill

During the last dozen years the tales of suppression of free assemblage, free press, and free speech, by local authorities or the State operating under martial law have been so numerous as to have become an old story. They are attacked at the instigation of an economically and socially powerful class, itself enjoying to the full the advantages of free communications, but bent on denying them to the class it holds within its power. ~ Edward Alsworth Ross

The crisis of modern democracy is a profound one. Free elections, a free press and an independent judiciary mean little when the free market has reduced them to commodities available on sale to the highest bidder. ~ Arundhati Roy

The distinguishing feature of advanced industrial society is its effective suffocation of those needs which demand liberation - liberation also from that which is tolerable and rewarding and comfortable - while it sustains and absolves the destructive power and repressive function of the affluent society. Here, the social controls exact the overwhelming need for the production and consumption of waste; the need for stupefying work where it is no longer a real necessity; the need for modes of relaxation which soothe and prolong this stupefication; the need for maintaining such deceptive liberties as free competition at administered prices, a free press which censors itself, free choice between brands and gadgets. ~ Herbert Marcuse

The essence of the free press is the reliable, reasonable and moral nature of freedom. ~ Karl Marx

You want a culture where citizens are free to express themselves and so live in the openness necessary to the functioning of a successful economy? Israel has a free press, much of it openly hostile to the parties in power. ~ John Podhoretz

The only time you have a free press is when you own one. ~ H.L. Mencken

Everyone asks for freedom for himself,
The man free love, the businessman free trade,
The writer and talker free speech and free press. ~ Robert Frost

We talk about a free press. These people hide, they make a lot of money off the media. They hide behind the slogans of free press, and then they can come out with crap like that. It's just garbage. It's insulting to the readers. ~ Robert Scheer

You cannot extend the mastery of government over the daily life of a people without somewhere making it master of people's souls and thoughts ... Every step in that direction poisons the very roots of liberalism. It poisons political equality, free speech, free press, and equality of opportunity. It is the road not to more liberty but to less liberty. ~ Herbert Hoover

Without a free press there can be no free society. That is axiomatic. However, freedom of the press is not an end in itself but a means to the end of a free society. The scope and nature of the constitutional guarantee of the freedom of the press are to be viewed and applied in that light. ~ Felix Frankfurter

I tell you, in my opinion, the cornerstone of democracy is free press - that's the cornerstone. ~ Milos Forman

Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Mexico is a country without political freedom, without freedom of speech, without a free press, without a free ballot, without a jury system, without political parties, without any of our cherJ ished guarantees of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is a land where there has been no contest for the office of president for more than a generation, where the executive rules all things by means of a standing army, where political offices are sold for a fixed price. I found Mexico to be a land where the people are poor because they have no rights, where peonage is the rule for the great mass, and where actual chattel slavery obtains for hundreds of thousands. ~ John Kenneth Turner

The only security of all is in a free press. ~ Thomas Jefferson

When the public's right to know is threatened, and when the rights of free speech and free press are at risk, all of the other liberties we hold dear are endangered. ~ Christopher Dodd

Do you realize,' Dr. Ramzi says, smiling broadly, 'when you speak of a political programme, that your programme now is the same that Mahmoud Sami Al-Baroudi's government tried to establish more than a hundred years ago?'
'Is that right?' Isabel says.
'Yes. Yes, for sure,' Dr. Ramzi says. 'Listen: the ending of foreign influence, the payment of the Egyptian debt -' he counts them off on his fingers - 'an elected parliament, a national industry, equality of all men before the law, reform of education, and allowing a free press to reflect all shades of opinion. Those were the seven points of their programme. These young people -' the wave of his hand takes in the group - 'they still ask for this.' He shrugs. ~ Ahdaf Soueif

Press freedom does not mean that the press should be above the law. While it's vital that a free press can tell truth to power, it is equally important that those in power can tell truth to the press. ~ David Cameron

Although I may find the type of programming seen during the 2004 Super Bowl and the 2003 Golden Globe Awards disgusting and disturbing, we must always work hard to defend the cherished freedoms so clearly outlined in our Constitution, including a healthy and free press. ~ Mike Rogers

The United States, almost alone today, offers the liberties and the privileges and the tools of freedom. In this land the citizens are still invited to write their plays and books, to paint their pictures, to meet for discussion, to dissent as well as to agree, to mount soapboxes in the public square, to enjoy education in all subjects without censorship, to hold court and judge one another, to compose music, to talk politics with their neighbors without wondering whether the secret police are listening, to exchange ideas as well as goods, to kid the government when it needs kidding, and to read real news of real events instead of phony news manufactured by a paid agent of the state. This is a fact and should give every person pause. ~ E.B. White

Paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell. ~ Hugo Black

Communist leaders ask humanity to endure the conflagration of revolutionary violence, the suppression and liquidation of resistance groups, the expropriation of property, the Dictatorship of the Proletariat which they themselves describe as "based on force and unrestricted by any laws," the suspension of all civil liberties - suppression of free press, free speech and assembly, the existence of slave labor camps, the constant observation of all citizens by secret police, the long periods of service ~ W. Cleon Skousen

One sad consequence of this is that people don't feel permitted to try understand Internet infrastructure, so I'm really grateful to groups like Free Press and other nonprofits who are trying to make the issue urgent and comprehensible. And Andre Blum's book Tubes is great on this topic. ~ Astra Taylor

In regard to propaganda the early advocates of universal literacy and a free press envisaged only two possibilities: the propaganda might be true, or the propaganda might be false. They did not foresee what in fact has happened, above all in our Western capitalist democracies - the development of a vast mass communications industry, concerned in the main neither with the true nor the false, but with the unreal, the more or less totally irrelevant. In a word, they failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions.
In the past most people never got a chance of fully satisfying this appetite. They might long for distractions, but the distractions were not provided. Christmas came but once a year, feasts were "solemn and rare," there were few readers and very little to read, and the nearest approach to a neighborhood movie theater was the parish church, where the performances though frequent, were somewhat monotonous. For conditions even remotely comparable to those now prevailing we must return to imperial Rome, where the populace was kept in good humor by frequent, gratuitous doses of many kinds of entertainment - from poetical dramas to gladiatorial fights, from recitations of Virgil to all-out boxing, from concerts to military reviews and public executions. But even in Rome there was nothing like the non-stop distractions now provided by newspapers and magazines, by radio, television and the cinema. In "Brave New World" non-stop distractions of ~ Aldous Huxley

The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One s right to life liberty and property to free speech a free press freedom of worship and assembly and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote they depend on the outcome of no elections. ~ Robert H. Jackson

The Press will not be free to tell lies. That is not freedom for the people, but a tyranny over their minds and souls. Much humbug is talked on this subject. What is press freedom? In practice it means the right of a dew millionaires to corner newspaper shares on the stock exchange and to voice their own opinions and interests, irrespective of the truth or of the national interest. ~ Oswald Mosley

A free press doesn't mean it's not a tame press. ~ Andrew Vachss

A people that wants to be free must arm itself with a free press. ~ George Seldes

Without free speech one cannot claim other liberties, or defend them when they are attacked. Without free speech one cannot have a democratic process, which requires the statement and testing of policy proposals and party platforms. Without free speech one cannot have a due process at law, in which one can defend oneself, accuse, collect and examine evidence, make a case or refute one. Without free speech there cannot be genuine education and research, enquiry, debate, exchange of information, challenges to falsehood, questioning of governments, proposal and examination of opinion. Without free speech there cannot be a free press, which...is necessary...as one of the two essential estates of a free society (the other being an independent judiciary). ~ A.C. Grayling

Would you like Fox's right to free press put up to a vote and say: "Well, if five states have approved it, let's wait till the other 45 states do."? ~ Ted Olson

He had heard especially promising things about Philadelphia
the lively capital of that young nation. It was said to be a city with a good-enough shipping port, central to the eastern coast of the country, filled with pragmatic Quakers, pharmacists, and hardworking farmers. It was rumored to be a place without haughty aristocrats (unlike Boston), and without pleasure-fearing puritans (unlike Connecticut), and without troublesome self-minted feudal princes (unlike Virginia). The city had been founded on the sound principles of religious tolerance, a free press, and good landscaping, by William Penn
a man who grew tree saplings in bathtubs, and who had imagined his metropolis as a great nursery of both plants and ideas. Everyone was welcome in Philadelphia, absolutely everyone
except, of course, the Jews. Hearing all this, Henry suspected Philadelphia to be a vast landscape of unrealized profits, and he aimed to turn the place to his advantage. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

A free press can, of course, be good or bad, but, most certainly without freedom, the press will never be anything but bad. ~ Albert Camus

It is almost superfluous to say that there is no such thing as a free and independent press among the mainstream news media today. In fact, the major media more resembles a propaganda machine than it does a free press. ~ Chuck Baldwin

There is nothing so fretting and vexatious, nothing so justly terrible to tyrants, and their tools and abettors, as a free press. ~ Samuel

No substantial famine has ever occurred in any independent and democratic country with a relatively free press. ~ Amartya Sen

Free inquiry entails recognition of civil liberties as integral to its pursuit, that is, a free press, freedom of communication, the right to organize opposition parties and to join voluntary associations, and freedom to cultivate and publish the fruits of scientific, philosophical, artistic, literary, moral and religious freedom. ~ Paul Kurtz

A managed democracy is a wonderful thing ... for the managers ... and its greatest strength is a 'free press' when 'free' is defined as 'responsible' and the managers define what is 'irresponsible'. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

I'm very much in support of the free press, but the free press ought to be educational and informative. And I believe they have fallen down recently on that. ~ Samuel Dash

What is the value of having millions of people in Iraq not having a repressive regime? What is the value of having the Iraqi regime not shooting at UK and US aircraft almost every day? What is the value of the Iraqis having a free press? What is the value of the foreign minister of Iraq going to Paris, calling for an end of the Gadhafi regime and citing Iraq as a model, as an example, that in fact a freer political system can exist in that part of the world? ~ Donald Rumsfeld

Freedom of speech gives us the right to offend others, whereas freedom of thought gives them the choice as to whether or not to be offended. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Try to be pleasant to one another, get plenty of fresh air, read a good book now and then, depose your government when it suspends the free press, try to use the mechanism of the state to adjudicate fairly and employ diplomatic means wherever possible to avoid armed conflict. ~ Jasper Fforde

Free speech, free press, free religion, the right of free assembly, yes, the right of petition ... well, they are still radical ideas. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson

No one needs to tell me about the importance of the free press in a democratic society or about the essential role a newspaper can play in its community. ~ Robert Kennedy

I am quite excited that Moi is leaving. Kenyans have changed. We have a free press, and it is no longer a situation of 'follow in my footsteps.' ~ Binyavanga Wainaina

The first thing dictators do is finish free press, to establish censorship. There is no doubt that a free press is the first enemy of dictatorship. ~ Fidel Castro

Mr. Orage, one of the most active and intelligent reformers for the last generation in England, attempted this very thing. He, in his little intellectual review which was supported by so brilliant a group of writers for so many years, published week after week the ingredients of the English patent medicines and the cost of those ingredients. Not a single one of the newspapers followed suit, or dared publish so much as the fact that Orage was thus acting courageously in his own limited sphere for the public good. ~ Hilaire Belloc

What I'm thinking about more and more these days is simply the importance of transparency, and Jefferson's saying that he'd rather have a free press without a government than a government without a free press. ~ Esther Dyson

Britain is still seen as a beacon for decency, for democracy, for vigorous judges upholding the rule of law and, dare I say it, a free press. I respect the press in theory, but when you see some of the things it writes about you, it's not exactly a happy relationship. ~ Cherie Blair

The free press guarantee does not only protect corporate reporters but anyone engaged in journalism, whether employed or not. ~ Glenn Greenwald

Thinking about free speech brought me to media regulation, as Americans access so much of their political and cultural speech through mass media. That led me to work on the FCC's media ownership rules beginning in 2005 to fight media consolidation, working with those at Georgetown's IPR, Media Access Project, Free Press, and others. ~ Marvin Ammori

No use complaining about the world's freest press-we fought for it, we got it, now we have to live with the nonsense that it spews out. ~ F. H. Batacan

A free press can only exist where there is private control over the means of production ~ Ludwig Von Mises

Free speech exercised both individually and through a free press, is a necessity in any country where people are themselves free. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Once the government can demand of a publisher the names of the purchasers of his publications, the free press as we know it disappears. Then the spectre of a government agent will look over the shoulder of everyone who reads. The purchase of a book or pamphlet today may result in a subpoena tomorrow. Fear of criticism goes with every person into the bookstall. The subtle, imponderable pressures of the orthodox lay hold. Some will fear to read what is unpopular, what the powers-that-be dislike. When the light of publicity may reach any student, any teacher, inquiry will be discouraged. The books and pamphlets that are critical of the administration, that preach an unpopular policy in domestic or foreign affairs, that are in disrepute in the orthodox school of thought will be suspect and subject to investigation. The press and its readers will pay a heavy price in harassment. But that will be minor in comparison with the menace of the shadow which government will cast over literature that does not follow the dominant party line. If the lady from Toledo can be required to disclose what she read yesterday and what she will read tomorrow, fear will take the place of freedom in the libraries, book stores, and homes of the land. Through the harassment of hearings, investigations, reports, and subpoenas government will hold a club over speech and over the press."

[United States v. Rumely, 345 U.S. 41 (1953)] ~ William O. Douglas

When people in power can operate in the dark, inevitably they abuse that power. So, you need outside forces to bring light and transparency to what they're doing. And, one of the ways you do that is through journalism, and through guaranteeing a free press. That is its purpose, to provide a check on those who wield power. ~ Glenn Greenwald

The rise to prominence of the Saudi novel in Arabic is the great man-bites-dog of recent world literature. Saudi Arabia is a country without a free press, where European styles and forms are distrusted and where the female half of the population became literate only in this generation. ~ James Buchan

The Iraqi Free Press, which did not exist 18 months ago because there was no such thing as the Iraqi Free Press, broke a story about the U.N. Oil-for-Food scandal, which could potentially turn out to be the largest scandal in history. ~ Chris Chocola

In modern democracies, press freedom was being used as a cloak to shield media conglomerates' domination of public discussion 'in which misinformation may be peddled uncorrected and in which reputations may be selectively shredded or magnified. A free press is not an unconditional good.' When the media mislead, she added, 'the wells of public discourse and public life are poisoned'.

Dr Onora O'Neill ~ Ian Hargreaves

In Britian we have a free press. It's not a pretty press, but it's free. The people who can't bear the Daily Mail, they say: 'you should ban it'. No no, no no, you don't ban it ... you don't buy it. ~ Ian Hislop

Virtually all the trends that matter are making a mockery of the industry's ritual incantations about the values and virtues of a free press in a free society. ~ Hodding Carter III

We are led to believe that we are in a democracy with a free press. When the evidence shows that we have neither. We're in a very serious situation. ~ Christopher Lee Bollyn

It is difficult to see how Gandhi's methods could be applied in a country where opponents of the regime disappear in the middle of the night and are never heard of again. Without a free press and the right of assembly, it is impossible not merely to appeal to outside opinion, but to bring a mass movement into being, or even to make your intentions known to your adversary. Is there a Gandhi in Russia at this moment? And if there is, what is he accomplishing? ~ George Orwell

He moved fractionally closer. As he did, she noticed that her hand was still held inside his. She tugged lightly to free herself.
He didn't let go.
"Lord Northcote."
"Lady Esme," he said, the faintest trace of mocking amusement in his voice.
"You may release me now."
"Oh, I will. After we've sealed our bargain."
"What do you mean by that? I've already consented to marry you."
"Indeed, but aren't you the least bit curious to see if we're compatible?"
An electrical charge, rather like one of her brother Drake's experiments, surged through her as Northcote wrapped his free arm around her waist and tugged her to him. ~ Tracy Anne Warren

Putin and his colleagues were reduced mainly to collecting press clippings, thus contributing to the growing mountains of useless information produced by the KGB. ~ Masha Gessen

You become a worrier by practicing worry. You can become free of worry by practicing the opposite and stronger habit of faith. With all the strength and perseverance you can command, start practicing faith. ~ Norman Vincent Peale

You can't make me mad by calling me names that are true. Certainly I'm a rascal, and why not? It's a free country and a man may be a rascal if he chooses. It's only hypocrites like you, my dear lady, just as black at heart but trying to hide it, who becomes enraged when called by their right names. ~ Margaret Mitchell

By this age, there is almost everything you need in your life, but it isn't free, you must fight to snatch it from the cruel powerful hands that withhold it from you. ~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

Can't you see the angel imprisoned in the block of stone trying to get out? I am trying to free him ~ Michelangelo

He groaned a little and pulled his mouth free, pressing it against her forehead, then her cheeks.
"I was going to start a fire ---"
He smiled down at her. "You did. ~ Terry Spear

Will Arnett and I were never in the same room, but once I saw early animation we started writing music for that and then he just kind of did his little rap over top, some of it was free form and some of it I made up, we all just kind of contributed to it. ~ Mark Mothersbaugh

She suffers as a miser. She must be miserly with her pleasures, as well. I wonder if sometimes she doesn't wish she were free of this monotonous sorrow, of these mutterings which start as soon as she stops singing, if she doesn't wish to suffer once and for all, to drown herself in despair. In any case, it would be impossible for her: she is bound. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

We have to hate our immediate predecessors to get free of their authority. ~ D.H. Lawrence

Each day is a new opportunity to make ourselves better. Don't wait for things to change, become the change. ~ Karen S. Shelton

But need alone is not enough to set power free: there must be knowledge. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Society needs first of all to be free from meddlersthat is, to be let alone. ~ William Graham Sumner

I Became a free woman when I decided to stop dreaming, freedom that is waiting for nothing .. and anticipation is a state of slavery - Ahlam (Chaos of the Senses) ~ Ahlam Mosteghanemi

I do not wish to offend you, believe me. I have told you my decision. Nothing can change it. I must leave, I must travel, I must be free. Let me thank you cordially once again, and let us bid each other a friendly farewell. ~ Hermann Hesse