"It is not enough to show people how to live better: there is a mandate for any group with enormous powers of communication to show people how to be better"
About this Quote
Mannes draws a hard line between lifestyle coaching and moral responsibility, and she aims it squarely at mass media. “Live better” is the language of consumer uplift: efficiency, comfort, self-optimization, the glossy promise that the right habits (or products) can smooth out existence. “Be better” is heavier, riskier, and less marketable. It implies character, civic duty, empathy, restraint - the kinds of virtues that can’t be purchased and often run against what sells.
The phrase “mandate” does the real work. Mannes isn’t politely requesting better programming; she’s arguing that communication power carries an ethical obligation. Subtext: if you can shape attention at scale, you’re already shaping values, whether you admit it or not. Neutrality becomes a dodge. The “group with enormous powers of communication” is both specific and elastic: mid-century newspapers, radio, and television in her day; platform companies and influencers in ours. She anticipates the modern tension where media insists it merely reflects society while its business model quietly engineers desire, outrage, and imitation.
Context matters: Mannes wrote in a century when propaganda proved how quickly mass communication could mobilize cruelty, and when advertising perfected the art of manufacturing dissatisfaction. Her sentence reads like a rebuttal to the idea that media’s job is simply to inform or entertain. It should cultivate judgment, not just preference.
What makes the line stick is its refusal to flatter the audience. It asks for moral formation, not tips - and it indicts the communicators who profit from the gap between the two.
The phrase “mandate” does the real work. Mannes isn’t politely requesting better programming; she’s arguing that communication power carries an ethical obligation. Subtext: if you can shape attention at scale, you’re already shaping values, whether you admit it or not. Neutrality becomes a dodge. The “group with enormous powers of communication” is both specific and elastic: mid-century newspapers, radio, and television in her day; platform companies and influencers in ours. She anticipates the modern tension where media insists it merely reflects society while its business model quietly engineers desire, outrage, and imitation.
Context matters: Mannes wrote in a century when propaganda proved how quickly mass communication could mobilize cruelty, and when advertising perfected the art of manufacturing dissatisfaction. Her sentence reads like a rebuttal to the idea that media’s job is simply to inform or entertain. It should cultivate judgment, not just preference.
What makes the line stick is its refusal to flatter the audience. It asks for moral formation, not tips - and it indicts the communicators who profit from the gap between the two.
Quote Details
| Topic | Ethics & Morality |
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