Politics & Power Quote by Roger Mudd

The jab lands because it comes from inside the clubhouse. Roger Mudd isn’t a politician snarling at reporters; he’s a veteran journalist coolly suggesting that the press has behaved so badly it has made its own ethical guidelines seem fictional. The line hinges on a backhanded premise: Americans are assumed to have watched a decade of media conduct and concluded, reasonably, that no restraint exists. That sting is the point.

Mudd’s intent is corrective, not anti-press populism. He’s shaming the profession by measuring it against its own professed standards and finding the gap humiliatingly wide. The subtext is a kind of institutional self-indictment: ethics codes are treated like ceremonial plaques on a wall, comforting to insiders, invisible to the public who experience journalism as spectacle, agenda, or careerism. The surprise isn’t that a code exists; it’s that anyone would believe it matters.

Contextually, the “past decade” evokes the era when television news hardened into a permanent arena: ratings pressure, the cult of the anchor, the temptation to blur reporting with performance, and high-profile missteps that taught audiences to suspect manipulation before they suspect error. The quote weaponizes that distrust to argue for reform. Its cleverness is that it doesn’t defend the press by insisting it’s principled; it defends the idea of a principled press by admitting the industry has earned skepticism. That admission, delivered dryly, is both chastisement and a plea: credibility isn’t declared by codes, it’s rebuilt through behavior.