"At the White House, everybody works for the same person. They're all part of the same company. But on Capitol Hill, they're all independent contractors. They all work for themselves. That's a formula for getting news"
About this Quote
Washington runs on org charts until it doesn’t. Bob Schieffer’s line lands because it demystifies the two branches with a metaphor any viewer can feel in their gut: one building is a single employer, the other is a gig economy. In the White House, loyalty is structural. Staffers are hired to advance one principal, punished for freelancing, and trained to treat information as an asset to be rationed. The press’s job there becomes less reporting than negotiating access inside a disciplined message machine.
Capitol Hill, Schieffer argues, is built to leak. “Independent contractors” isn’t just a cute turn; it’s a blunt diagnosis of incentives. Members of Congress don’t rise by protecting the institution’s brand. They rise by protecting their own. Every senator and representative is running a perpetual campaign, cultivating donors, audiences, and cable hits. Staffers mirror that logic: they job-hop, they build reputations, they trade scoops for influence. Fragmentation becomes a feature, not a bug, for journalists hunting storylines.
The subtext is a quiet defense of political journalism’s obsession with Congress: it’s not only where bills live; it’s where narrative oxygen comes from. Schieffer, a veteran of an era when network anchors served as gatekeepers, is also admitting something more uncomfortable: “getting news” often means finding the arena where self-interest reliably produces candor. Not purity, not truth-telling for its own sake, but competitively motivated disclosure. The quote works because it reduces Washington’s moral theatrics to incentives, and incentives, unlike rhetoric, don’t bluff.
Capitol Hill, Schieffer argues, is built to leak. “Independent contractors” isn’t just a cute turn; it’s a blunt diagnosis of incentives. Members of Congress don’t rise by protecting the institution’s brand. They rise by protecting their own. Every senator and representative is running a perpetual campaign, cultivating donors, audiences, and cable hits. Staffers mirror that logic: they job-hop, they build reputations, they trade scoops for influence. Fragmentation becomes a feature, not a bug, for journalists hunting storylines.
The subtext is a quiet defense of political journalism’s obsession with Congress: it’s not only where bills live; it’s where narrative oxygen comes from. Schieffer, a veteran of an era when network anchors served as gatekeepers, is also admitting something more uncomfortable: “getting news” often means finding the arena where self-interest reliably produces candor. Not purity, not truth-telling for its own sake, but competitively motivated disclosure. The quote works because it reduces Washington’s moral theatrics to incentives, and incentives, unlike rhetoric, don’t bluff.
Quote Details
| Topic | Management |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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