Leadership Quote by Dixie Lee Ray

Ray’s complaint isn’t just that journalists get things wrong; it’s that the incentives of modern media reward the wrong part of the story. The line is built on a brutal asymmetry: accusation travels at headline speed, correction crawls in small type. By contrasting “print charges no matter how outlandish” with truth that’s “buried in the back page,” she frames the press not as a watchdog but as an amplifier - a machine optimized for spectacle, not verification.

The intent is defensive and preemptive. A politician who expects to be targeted (or who wants supporters to feel that way) lays down a ready-made interpretation for any future scandal: if you hear something damning, assume it was media carelessness or malice. That’s the subtext: don’t litigate the allegation; litigate the legitimacy of the people reporting it. It’s a savvy move because it shifts debate from evidence to process, where certainty is harder and cynicism comes easy.

Context matters. Ray governed in an era when national political coverage was becoming more centralized, adversarial, and fast-moving - and when “investigative journalism” had cultural prestige after Watergate. Her critique piggybacks on that moment’s paranoia about media power while also challenging its moral authority. The phrasing “never makes it on the air at all” nods to television’s growing role as gatekeeper, implying that what counts as reality is increasingly what broadcasts, not what’s true.

It works because it captures a real structural problem (the correction gap) while offering a politically useful conclusion: distrust the messenger first, facts second.