Politics & Power Quote by Roone Arledge

Arledge’s line is a cool, almost shrugging diagnosis of a permanent media dilemma: Congress generates a blizzard of activity, but the public’s attention is rationed by self-interest. The “most” matters. He’s not claiming people are ignorant or malicious; he’s saying the signal-to-noise ratio of governance is brutal, and audiences use a simple filter: Does this touch my job, my taxes, my rights, my hometown? If not, it becomes background radiation.

The subtext is a quiet rebuke to both institutions that depend on each other. For politicians, it suggests that broad civic narratives often lose to pocketbook hooks. For journalists, it’s an admission that “process” stories - committee markups, procedural fights, incremental amendments - struggle to compete with the kind of concrete consequences that feel personal. Arledge, a TV-news architect who helped turn journalism into appointment viewing, understood that attention is the scarcest resource in public life. This isn’t cynicism for its own sake; it’s a programming note about human nature and the medium.

Context matters: Arledge’s career spans the rise of televised politics, when Congress became a distant stage and the newsroom became the translator. His comment hints at why modern political coverage tilts toward impact framing, conflict, and stakes: not because reporters are shallow, but because democratic information has to clear the hurdle of relevance. The uncomfortable implication is that public accountability can become episodic - activated by direct harm, dulled by abstraction - leaving vast swaths of policy to be decided in the quiet.