在权力集中的社会，政府对媒体的管控和审查让人很容易理解为媒体受精英主导。但在市场化媒体主导、政府审查隐蔽的国家，人们很难辨别政治宣传的存在。私有媒体间相互竞争，有时会报道和批评政府的弊端，还总不遗余力把自己塑造成言论自由和民众利益的代言人，这就让识别政治宣传变得难上加难。

——艾弗拉姆·诺姆·乔姆斯基

In countries where the levers of power are in the hands of a state bureaucracy, the monopolistic control over the media, often supplemented by official censorship, makes it clear that the media serve the ends of a dominant elite. It is much more difficult to see a propaganda system at work where the media are private and formal censorship is absent. This is especially true where the media actively compete, periodically attack and expose corporate and governmental malfeasance, and aggressively portray themselves as spokesmen for free speech and the general community interest.

—Avram Noam Chomsky

我一直在想，如果我能在“一战”时做政治宣传，我完全可以在和平年代时也做。但“政治宣传”这个词不好，因为德国纳粹也在用它。所以我找了个其他的词，成立了公共关系委员会。

——(美国宣传“教父”)爱德华·伯尼斯

I thought if you could use propaganda for war, you could certainly use it for peace. Propaganda got be bad word because of the Germans using it. What I did was to find some other words, so we founded Council on Public Relations.

—Edward L.Bernays