A Quote by Stephen F. Cohen

The mainstream media hears what it wants to hear and has its own narratives.

Stephen F. Cohen

Quote Topics

Hear Hears Mainstream Mainstream Media Media Narratives Own Wants

Quote Author

Stephen F. Cohen
American - Scholar
Born: 1938

I was on television a couple of years ago and the reporter asked me, "How does it feel being on mainstream media? It's not often poets get on mainstream media." I said, "Well I think you're the dominant media, the dominant culture, but you're not the mainstream media. The mainstream media is still the high culture of intellectuals: writers, readers, editors, librarians, professors, artists, art critics, poets, novelists, and people who think. They are the mainstream culture, even though you may be the dominant culture."

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Generally, I start by observing the existing and popular narratives in my social spheres and media, and the pressures I face in my own life experiences. As someone who is "newly" trans, I am constantly thinking about what the dominant narratives are around transness, how my work can push against these narratives, and how it already falls into these traps.

Vivek Shraya

I think there is a mainstream media. CNN is mainstream media, and the main, ABC, CBS, NBC are mainstream media. And I think it's just essentially to make the point that we are largely in the center without particular axes to grind, without ideologies which are represented in our daily coverage, at least certainly not on purpose.

Peter Jennings

Protesters should make their own media and not rely on mainstream media to cover them.

Naomi Wolf

The media doesn't create narratives, really. They're not that powerful. What they do is they tap into narratives that are already bubbling amongst their viewership or readership.

Beau Willimon

All lies and jests, still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.

Paul Simon

A man hears what he wants to hear, and disregards the rest. I think that kind of thing is an abuse of history.

Paul Kingsnorth

What the media is playing is what people want is really a false idea. Capitalism and people who control the market have a large hand in everything. It doesn't have anything to do with figuring out what the crowd wants to hear. It has to do with the media deciding what they think people want to hear.

Boots Riley

To me, it's just that social media is allowing people to be in charge of their own narratives.

Jose Antonio Vargas

The beauty of music is that everyone hears it their own way, and every song you hear leaves an impression on you that alters the way you hear everything from that point on.

JC Chasez

Part of the problem is that if anybody has a gut reaction about an issue, they can go online and have it backed up. That said, they can also find support for their ideas in the mainstream media - because when the mainstream media gives a so-called balanced view, it's often misleading.

Simon Singh

Independent documentary isn't beholden to some of the interests that the mainstream media are influenced by. It's a pathway to renegade, independent reporting in an in-depth, investigative fashion, and it can do so with a compassionate lens; it allows people to speak in a way that is more human than the mainstream media approach.

Josh Fox

Independent documentary isnt beholden to some of the interests that the mainstream media are influenced by. Its a pathway to renegade, independent reporting in an in-depth, investigative fashion, and it can do so with a compassionate lens; it allows people to speak in a way that is more human than the mainstream media approach.

Josh Fox

I think maybe since there isn't a great deal of access to the mainstream media and people don't understand the language of mainstream media, if you put music out there with lyrics that are loosely political, people absorb some of it and spit it back out.

Thom Yorke

I'm interested in exploring the places where all media meet. As TV, Internet, art, games and movies all start moving towards the same point, I want to be part of inventing that space. I'd like to explore media that are traditionally seen as part of the mainstream but not necessarily utilize mainstream formulas.