Daily Inspiration Quote by Sydney Schanberg

There is a hard-edged professional ethic packed into Schanberg's line: journalism is not a brand you wave, it's a practice you defend. The phrasing is almost prosecutorial. "If you believe" sets a moral test, not a preference, then the sentence snaps shut on its consequence: you cannot claim allegiance to the institution while publicly degrading the people doing the work well. It's a gatekeeping move, but the good kind - a boundary drawn to protect a craft from being hollowed out by performative loyalty.

The subtext is about power. Insulting "good journalists" is rarely just venting; it's a tactic. When officials, publishers, or pundits smear credible reporters as hacks, elites, or enemies, they're trying to make scrutiny feel illegitimate before the facts even land. Schanberg collapses that maneuver into an inconsistency: you want the legitimacy of journalism (its role in accountability, its aura of truth-telling) without tolerating the discomfort it creates.

Context matters because Schanberg lived the consequences of reporting that governments and institutions would rather bury. As a Pulitzer-winning correspondent on Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge, he knew that "good journalism" can be inconvenient, dangerous, and politically costly. His statement isn't sentimental about the press; it's defensive in the literal sense: a warning that the quickest way to weaken a watchdog is to train the public to mistrust the bark. By specifying "good journalists", he also dodges the easy retort that the profession deserves criticism. Sure it does. His line is about a different move: discrediting competence itself to make accountability optional.