Among the privileges enjoyed by rich, fat, superpower America is the power to invent public reality. Politicians and the mass media do much of the inventing for us by telling us stories which purport to unfold a relatively simple reality. As our tribal storytellers, they shape our knowledge and ignorance of the world, not only producing ideas and emotions which influence the way we lead our lives, but also leaving us dangerously unaware of the difference between stories and reality. Walter Cronkite used to sign off his nightly CBS television news show by saying “And that's the way it is . . .” I once heard Senator Eugene McCarthy say he always wanted to reply, “No, Walter, that's not the way it is at all.”
– “The Awful Truth”, The New York Review of Books Nov. 6, 2003