"Of course the Munich tragedy was the biggest event in my career and the most terrible"
About this Quote
Calling it “the biggest event in my career” is almost grotesquely professional, a metric from the newsroom applied to murder. That’s the point. The subtext is the permanent collision between journalism’s career calculus and human catastrophe. McKay admits the uncomfortable truth: tragedy is what makes reputations. He also immediately corrects the moral imbalance by pairing “biggest” with “most terrible,” yoking the industry’s language of scale to an ethical judgment that refuses to romanticize the moment.
The intent feels less like self-mythmaking than an attempt to name an internal dissonance he couldn’t edit out: pride at having done the job, shame at what the job required, and a survivor’s guilt for being the person who got the microphone instead of the bullet. Even the plainness is strategic. The sentence is built to resist being quoted as inspiration. It leaves you with the uneasy recognition that for journalists, history’s worst days don’t just happen in the world; they happen inside their work, and then inside them.
Quote Details
| Topic | Sports |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
McKay, Jim. (2026, January 15). Of course the Munich tragedy was the biggest event in my career and the most terrible. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/of-course-the-munich-tragedy-was-the-biggest-83601/
Chicago Style
McKay, Jim. "Of course the Munich tragedy was the biggest event in my career and the most terrible." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/of-course-the-munich-tragedy-was-the-biggest-83601/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Of course the Munich tragedy was the biggest event in my career and the most terrible." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/of-course-the-munich-tragedy-was-the-biggest-83601/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.





