John Dos Passos

In Manhattan Transfer by John Dos Passos, the character John Oglethorpe unleashes the following rant at a lowly newspaper reporter:

"I read and keep silent. I am one of the silent watchers. I know that every sentence, every word, every picayune punctuation that appears in the public press is perused and revised and deleted in the interests of advertisers and bondholders. The fountain of national life is poisoned at the source."

Remarkably, this was written in 1925. Some things never change.