Engineers of the soul Some longer ago
"There is no such thing in America as an independent press, unless it is in the country towns. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to writes (sic) his honest opinions, and if you did you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid one hundred and fifty dollars a week for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with -others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things - and any of you who would be so foolish as to write his honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. The business of the New York journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his race and his country for his daily bread. You know this and I know it, and what folly is this to be toasting an 'Independent Press'. We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping-jacks; they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes."
John Swinton, editor of the New York Tribune, in the 1880s, at a banquet of his fellow editors

Some while ago
" I have the greatest admiration for your propaganda. Propaganda in the West is carried out by experts who have had the best training in the world - in the field of advertizing - and have mastered the techniques with exceptional proficiency ... Yours are subtle and persuasive; ours are crude and obvious ... I think that the fundamental difference between our worlds, with respect to propaganda, is quite simple. You tend to believe yours ... and we tend to disbelieve ours. "
a Soviet correspondent based five years in the U.S
*In a dictatorship, censorship is used; in a democracy, manipulation.*
Ryszard Kapuscinski, journalist

Now
For the actual Italian mediapolitical situation I add: “The Italians float in a virtual reality prefabricated by the mediatic regime. If television doesn’t mention a fact or an argument, the people convince themselves that it doesn’t exist, or that it is not important.”  ¶ Saturday, February 12, 2005