Daily Inspiration Quote by Peter Jennings

Jennings is puncturing the piety that often surrounds “objectivity” in American journalism: a word that sounds like a virtue but behaves like a badge. His refusal to be a “slave” isn’t a confession of bias so much as a rejection of a ritual - the performance of neutrality that can become its own kind of coercion. The line works because it shifts the burden of proof back onto the newsroom’s favorite incantation. If no one can define the term consistently, why should it be treated as sacred?

The subtext is a veteran anchor’s realism about how news actually gets made. Choices are unavoidable: which facts lead, which voices get airtime, what tone signals credibility, what gets framed as “controversy” versus “consensus.” “Objectivity” can disguise those choices as if they were automatic outputs of a machine. Jennings is also hinting at how the word is weaponized. To one audience, objectivity means “don’t show emotion.” To another, it means “don’t challenge power.” To another, it means “validate my worldview by giving it equal weight.”

Context matters: Jennings came up in an era when network news sold itself as a national referee. By late 20th-century standards, that posture was both a source of trust and a trap, especially when “balance” drifted into false equivalence. His skepticism reads like an early acknowledgment that credibility isn’t earned by pretending you have no point of view; it’s earned by being transparent about methods, rigorous with evidence, and honest about what you can’t know.