Today’s Quotes: Media ‘Balance’

“[O]ne of the things that really has gotten dumber about our culture: the media constantly talks about truth as if it … were always equidistant from two points. In other words, sometimes the truth is one-sided.” […]
“[I]t’s exactly like saying … ‘so-and-so says, two plus two equals five. But, of course, mathematicians say that it really equals four.’ The mathematicians are right. The people who say that two plus two equals five are wrong. The media blurs that constantly.”
— Susan Jacoby, from Bill Moyers’ Journal, PBS, Feb. 15, 2008.

“The most consistent and ultimately damaging failure of political journalism in America has its roots in the clubby/cocktail personal relationships that inevitably develop between politicians and journalists.”
— Hunter S. Thompson, “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72”

“The most dangerous untruths are truths moderately distorted.”
— Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

“Anti-intellectualism is nurtured by the false notion that democracy means ‘my ignorance is as good as your knowledge’.”
– Isaac Asimov

“After all, everybody only hears what they understand.”
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe