“People believe what they already want to believe, and they want news that already agrees with how they feel. It isn’t new and it isn’t going away.”— Zachary Kagan, medium.com
“This is what scares establishment media types more than anything, not that people are spreading bullshit but that they are no longer in control of what bullshit gets spread.”— Zachary Kagan, medium.com
“Different outlets have been publishing sensationalist, less-than-true stories in order to sell copies since the dawn of print media. In the late-19th/early-20th century they called it yellow journalism, and after that there were tabloids, and after that attention-grabbing radio and TV stories design…”— Zachary Kagan, medium.com
“Before someone would decide to spend $1 million on a campaign with five or 10 publishers. Now they’re going to do it with one publisher. It will raise the stakes in terms of campaign proposals, the ideas proposed. The stakes are going to go up a lot more. It will hurt a lot more when you don’t win o…”— Michael Finnegan, digiday.com
“If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed, if you do read it, you’re misinformed.”— Denzel Washington, washingtonpost.com
“Academics and the media in particular should support viewpoint diversity instead of serving as the handmaidens of political expediency by trying to exclude voices or damage reputations and careers. If academics and the media won’t support open debate, who will?”— Roger Pielke Jr., wsj.com
“Why do good work when studies show that this is actually a deterrent to social sharing?”— Ryan Holiday, observer.com
“The Observer knows that the headline ‘Dave Chappelle Told Jokes About Politics’ is going to do less well than its sensational headline about him defending Trump and trashing Clinton (just as TMZ knew they could get traffic out of baiting Chappelle into responding). Just as you know deep down that mo…”— Ryan Holiday, observer.com
“fake news is probably closer to the actual heritage of journalism than truth-telling is.”— Ryan Holiday, observer.com
“Watching the news will always make you feel like the world is ending. The world isn’t ending. The world is changing.”— Adam Gnade, amazon.com
“This is the state of truth on the internet in 2016, now that it is as easy for a Macedonian teenager to create a website as it is for The New York Times, and now that the information most likely to find a large audience is that which is most alarming, not most correct.”— Jessi Hempel, backchannel.com
“There is plenty to do in this world, and plenty to be vigilant about. But let’s stop pretending that the ticker-tape of the news feed is anything other than what it is: addiction and manipulation masquerading as a social good. Then we wonder why we’re sapped of reason and willpower and perspective.”— Ryan Holiday, observer.com
“I reject the idea that the pot is nearly at a boil and I must watch it closely until the exact moment that it happens.”— Ryan Holiday, observer.com
“Twitter isn’t designed to help you get in and get out with the best information as quickly as possible—it’s supposed to suck you into either a contentious world of argument and debate or an echo-chamber that reassures you everyone thinks like you do.”— Ryan Holiday, observer.com
“But the more Vox persists, the less hope there is for American politics. The Vox model is premised on the idea that people shouldn’t think for themselves, that the important parts of political thought and decision-making should be outsourced to experts. Inevitably, these experts will produce solutio…”— Nathan J. Robinson, currentaffairs.org
“News is mainly entertainment. Its primary objective is to keep you watching so that it makes money. What better than negativity and apocalyptic scenarios to keep your attention?”— Michal Bohanes, medium.com
“I think that I may be the voice of my generation. Or at least a voice. Of a generation.”— Lena Dunham, Hannah Horvath, amazon.com
“Anyone smart enough to accomplish what they have should know better than to risk everything by talking to the vultures in the media.”— Ernest Cline, amazon.com
“The magazines telling me strong is the new sexy and smart is the new beautiful, as though strong and smart are just paths to hot. The Facebook memes: Muscles are beautiful. No, wait: Fat is beautiful. No, wait: Thin is beautiful, too, as long as you don’t work for it. No, wait: All women are beautif…”— Kristi Coulter, vox.com