Daily Inspiration Quote by Floyd Abrams

Abrams is doing what great First Amendment lawyers always do: laundering self-interest into civic virtue, then daring you to object. The sentence is built like a legal brief disguised as plain talk. He starts with a double denial - not CBS, not its reporters - preemptively stepping around the oldest critique of press protections: that theyre just perks for an already powerful industry. By the time he lands on "the public", the frame has shifted from corporate advantage to democratic necessity, a move as strategic as it is familiar.

The key phrase is "more information, more important information". Its not just quantity; its hierarchy. Abrams is smuggling in a judgment about what counts as "important" and who gets to decide. In practice, thats the newsroom, aided by lawyers like him, asking courts to treat journalistic newsgathering as a public service even when it looks like adversarial behavior. The subtext: you may not like CBS, but you like what CBS sometimes makes possible - sources who speak only if theyre protected, documents that surface only if reporters can promise confidentiality.

"Thats why so many states recognize this" is the quiet flex. Hes appealing to federalism as legitimacy: if enough states have shield laws or protections, the principle has earned its place in the constitutional ecosystem. Context matters here: Abrams has spent decades arguing that protections for the press arent about pampering journalists; theyre about ensuring the rest of us can see the machinery of power. He knows the audience is skeptical. The line is designed to make skepticism feel vaguely anti-public.