"I think it's important to travel around in order to get a notion of what's going on, to find out what people are think about. I enjoy talking on campuses most because people are more informed and discussion is generally livelier"
About this Quote
Salisbury is quietly staking out an old-school reporter's creed: you don't cover the world from a desk, and you don't understand it by sampling only official statements. The insistence on traveling "to get a notion of what's going on" sounds modest, almost folksy, but it's a rebuke to armchair punditry and to the bureaucratic version of reality that governments and institutions try to hand reporters pre-packaged. "Notion" is doing a lot of work here. It's not certainty, not ideology, not a grand theory - it's a stitched-together sense of truth built from proximity, contradiction, and the friction of actual conversation.
The subtext is that public opinion isn't a monolith waiting to be summarized; it's something you have to chase, in multiple places, with your own eyes and ears. Salisbury's career context matters: he reported through the Cold War, when narratives were aggressively managed and access was politically charged. Movement itself becomes a method of resistance - a way to puncture propaganda and to see how policy lands on ordinary lives.
His preference for campuses is equally revealing. He isn't romanticizing youth so much as privileging spaces where people have time to argue, read, and test ideas in public. "More informed" and "livelier" isn't just about energy; it's about accountability. A lively discussion implies pushback, and pushback is the journalist's oxygen. Salisbury is telling you what kind of audience he trusts: not necessarily the most powerful, but the most willing to interrogate, challenge, and refine a story in real time.
The subtext is that public opinion isn't a monolith waiting to be summarized; it's something you have to chase, in multiple places, with your own eyes and ears. Salisbury's career context matters: he reported through the Cold War, when narratives were aggressively managed and access was politically charged. Movement itself becomes a method of resistance - a way to puncture propaganda and to see how policy lands on ordinary lives.
His preference for campuses is equally revealing. He isn't romanticizing youth so much as privileging spaces where people have time to argue, read, and test ideas in public. "More informed" and "livelier" isn't just about energy; it's about accountability. A lively discussion implies pushback, and pushback is the journalist's oxygen. Salisbury is telling you what kind of audience he trusts: not necessarily the most powerful, but the most willing to interrogate, challenge, and refine a story in real time.
Quote Details
| Topic | Learning |
|---|
More Quotes by Harrison
Add to List
