Politics & Power Quote by Dan Rather

Dan Rather’s line is a warning shot at a very modern temptation: letting the mood of the crowd outsource the nerve of the press. “Denounce government” is already a combative verb, but the real jab lands in the qualifier: “by public opinion polls.” He’s not condemning polling as information; he’s condemning polling as a substitute for judgment. The phrase suggests a lazy alchemy where numbers turn into moral authority, where a dip in approval becomes the same thing as evidence of wrongdoing, and a spike becomes permission to look away.

The subtext is about power wearing a new disguise. Governments have always tried to manage narratives, but in a poll-driven era the public can become an unwitting co-author of propaganda: officials chase popularity, newsrooms chase the same metrics, and accountability gets reduced to a weather report. Rather’s impatience reads as professional self-defense. He’s insisting that journalism’s mandate isn’t to mirror consensus but to interrogate institutions even when consensus is wrong, distracted, or manufactured.

Context matters: Rather’s career runs through Vietnam, Watergate’s aftershocks, Iran-Contra, the rise of 24-hour cable, and then the analytics age where political coverage can become a sportscast of “who’s up.” His critique anticipates today’s feedback loops: polls feeding headlines feeding polls. The intent is bluntly ethical: the press shouldn’t borrow courage from percentages. It should earn it from reporting.