Wit & Attitude Quote by Roone Arledge

A newsroom doesn’t usually talk like a cornered animal unless it’s been treated like one. Roone Arledge’s line lands as both reassurance and warning: he’s signaling that the “news department” won’t have to perform its old survival routine - retreat, go limp, wait for management’s boot to move on. The phrasing “lie down and play dead” is brutally vivid, reducing institutional self-censorship to instinct. It implies that in the past, the safe move inside the network wasn’t to argue for journalism, but to disappear until the storm passed.

Arledge, the swashbuckling architect of modern TV sports and a major power at ABC News, is speaking in the dialect of internal politics: calm on the surface, sharp underneath. “By and large the network has been understanding” reads like praise until you hear the caveat embedded in the vagueness. Understanding of what, exactly - editorial independence, or the compromises needed to keep the lights on? Then comes the real power play: “but then so have I.” That’s not humility; it’s leverage. He’s reminding everyone that cooperation has been a two-way transaction, and that his patience has been an asset the network has relied on.

Context matters: late-20th-century broadcast news was perpetually negotiating with corporate risk, advertisers, and executive egos. Arledge’s intent is to reset the balance of that negotiation. He’s promising fewer humiliations for the newsroom, while quietly staking his claim as the adult in the room - the one who can be “understanding,” until he decides not to be.