Daily Inspiration Quote by Jessica Savitch

In an era when TV news was still fighting for legitimacy, Jessica Savitch flips the usual media panic on its head. The line is a quiet rebuke to the idea that audiences are passive sponges, easily soaked in whatever a network pours. Savitch argues the opposite: raise the standard and viewers don’t merely receive information, they develop taste. Better reporting doesn’t just inform; it trains the public to notice what’s missing, what’s evasive, what’s merely spectacle dressed as urgency.

The phrasing matters. “Coverage” sounds technical and neutral, like a blanket laid over events. Savitch treats it as a craft with moral consequences: if you cover well, you create a more “discriminating” viewer - a loaded word that suggests discernment, not snobbery. She’s talking about literacy in the language of broadcasts: who gets airtime, which facts get framed as “context,” which voices are treated as credible, which images do the heavy lifting. Good journalism, in her view, upgrades the audience’s operating system.

The subtext is also a challenge to newsrooms and executives: don’t excuse thin reporting by blaming low expectations. If the product is shallow, the public will adapt downward; if it’s rigorous, the public will meet it. Coming from a journalist who helped define the on-air seriousness of the late 70s and early 80s, it reads like a defense of ambition on television - and a warning that the medium doesn’t just reflect public appetite, it helps manufacture it.