"I don't believe he had a responsibility to even answer that question - you have no responsibility to answer personal questions that people have no right to ask you"
About this Quote
The intent is to reframe a familiar cable-news ritual - the gotcha personal question, the demand for a confession, the insinuation that refusal equals guilt. Matthews flips the burden: the real ethical problem isn’t the non-answer, it’s the ask. “No responsibility” is doing heavy lifting, importing a moral vocabulary into what’s usually treated as pure optics. He’s telling viewers to stop confusing access with authority.
The subtext is about consent and power. Personal questions aren’t neutral; they’re leverage. They can be used to humiliate, to steer a narrative, to force someone into either disclosure or defensive posture. By saying people have “no right” to ask, Matthews is also quietly critiquing the audience’s appetite for intimacy-as-accountability, that modern expectation that public figures owe us their private lives as proof of authenticity.
Context matters: this sounds like a response to a moment when the press is being accused, sometimes fairly, of turning politics and celebrity into the same content slurry. Matthews isn’t absolving public figures of real oversight; he’s insisting that accountability has a jurisdiction, and that privacy is not automatically forfeited at the studio door.
Quote Details
| Topic | Human Rights |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite | Cite this Quote |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Matthews, Chris. (n.d.). I don't believe he had a responsibility to even answer that question - you have no responsibility to answer personal questions that people have no right to ask you. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-dont-believe-he-had-a-responsibility-to-even-73875/
Chicago Style
Matthews, Chris. "I don't believe he had a responsibility to even answer that question - you have no responsibility to answer personal questions that people have no right to ask you." FixQuotes. Accessed February 2, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-dont-believe-he-had-a-responsibility-to-even-73875/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I don't believe he had a responsibility to even answer that question - you have no responsibility to answer personal questions that people have no right to ask you." FixQuotes, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-dont-believe-he-had-a-responsibility-to-even-73875/. Accessed 2 Feb. 2026.







