Politics & Power Quote by Jimmy Breslin

Breslin isn’t politely defending “the press.” He’s throwing an elbow at the kind of media operator who treats the public’s information diet like a personal vending machine: shake it hard enough, and the right headlines fall out. The phrase “tears at the public news” is deliberately physical, almost animal. It suggests not critique or competition, but extraction and damage - ripping value from something that’s meant to be shared.

The sharpest barb is “the impatience of one who thinks he actually owns the news you get.” Breslin’s target isn’t merely profit; it’s entitlement. He’s describing a figure who can’t stand the idea of an audience that doesn’t belong to him, or a reality he can’t curate. That “actually owns” lands like a sneer at monopolists and manipulators: people who confuse influence with property rights, and treat journalism as a private pipeline rather than a public utility.

Calling it “against the national interest” raises the stakes without lapsing into flag-waving. Breslin’s subtext is that democracy isn’t primarily threatened by censorship in a trench-coat; it’s threatened by commodification - when news becomes a leveraged asset, distorted by the short-term needs of whoever is cashing out. Coming from a streetwise columnist who made a career out of puncturing self-important power, the context is classic Breslin: populist moral clarity, suspicious of elites, allergic to anyone who mistakes the public square for a personal marketplace.