Daily Inspiration Quote by Robert McChesney

“But having said that” is doing the kind of rhetorical housekeeping critics rely on when they’re about to pivot from the safe, qualifying clause to the sharper claim that matters. McChesney isn’t offering a flashy aphorism; he’s signaling a turn in an argument, the moment when patience runs out and diagnosis begins. The phrase is deliberately modest, almost conversational, but it’s a setup for a bigger structural point: something has shifted, not just in technology or business models, but in public mood.

“Sea change” is the tell. It’s expansive language for an expansive target: media as an institution, not a single outlet or platform. McChesney’s intent is to frame media not as neutral plumbing but as a contested public arena where trust, power, and legitimacy are renegotiated. The subtext is that older assumptions - that mainstream journalism speaks with authority, that audiences passively receive, that gatekeepers are necessary and broadly respected - are dissolving. What’s replacing them is messier: skepticism hardening into cynicism, “media literacy” morphing into amateur forensics, and political identity shaping what counts as a fact.

Contextually, this line sits comfortably in the post-2008 ecosystem: collapsing ad revenue, platform dominance, the rise of participatory distribution, and a feedback loop of outrage and algorithmic amplification. McChesney, as a media critic, wants you to hear “attitude” as political economy in disguise. People aren’t merely changing their tastes; they’re responding to a system that feels captured, gamed, and unevenly accountable. The plainness of the sentence is strategic: it reads like a segue, but it smuggles in a warning about legitimacy loss on a civilizational scale.