Daily Inspiration Quote by Benjamin Cohen

There is something quietly disarming about a journalist confessing he was rude to journalists. It’s a line that punctures the professional myth of the perpetually available, civically minded media person and replaces it with a more human (and more accurate) portrait: someone stretched thin, defensive about their time, and aware that the “public sphere” often arrives as an inconvenient phone call.

Cohen’s intent reads less like self-flagellation than calibration. By admitting rudeness “at times,” he signals growth without claiming sainthood; the hedging is part of the honesty. The phrase “people phoning up for advice” does extra work: it conjures a specific ecosystem of British media and politics where networks are currency, contacts are constantly mined, and expertise becomes a kind of unpaid customer service. The subtext is about boundaries in a profession built on boundary-crossing. Journalists trade in access, but they also get treated like infrastructure.

Context matters because Cohen is known as a plugged-in operator, a connector as much as a writer. In that world, being brusque can be read as arrogance, but it can also be a coping mechanism: a way to ration attention when you’re asked to be responsive, insightful, and strategic on demand. The quote lands because it flips the usual power dynamic. We expect journalists to be the ones making the calls. Here, he’s on the receiving end, acknowledging the small cruelties that status and pressure can produce, and suggesting an ethics of hindsight: the recognition that professional urgency is not a moral exemption.