Politics & Power Quote by Sydney Schanberg

A working journalist doesn’t call the press a “power center” to flatter the profession; he does it to warn you that the game is already political, whether you admit it or not. Sydney Schanberg’s line reads like a blunt aside, almost unpolished in its urgency, but that’s part of its force: it’s less a thesis than a diagnostic. If you can’t “do it” without recognizing media power, then any serious attempt at public work - governing, reforming, even reporting - requires an understanding of who gets to set the agenda, shape legitimacy, and decide which facts become common knowledge.

The subtext is an indictment of innocence. Americans like to talk about “the media” as a neutral pipeline or, alternately, a villainous distortion machine. Schanberg cuts through both fantasies. He’s pointing to media as an institution with incentives, gatekeepers, social networks, and career pressures - a place where narrative is manufactured under constraints. That’s not conspiracy talk; it’s civics.

Context matters because Schanberg came out of an era when war coverage, official lies, and newsroom politics collided in real time. His career was forged in the recognition that what the public believes about distant violence or domestic scandal often depends less on what happened than on what editors will print, what sources will leak, and what audiences will tolerate.

The line also carries a professional confession: journalists aren’t just observers. They are participants in the power ecosystem they cover, and the most dangerous version of that participation is the unacknowledged kind.