"The publisher has told - you know, if these editors, Andres Martinez and Nick Goldberg, were the least bit honest about this, they would tell you the publisher has told them he wants the editorial page to be conservative"
About this Quote
Scheer’s line is less a complaint than a trapdoor: he drops you straight into the machinery of “objectivity” and lets the floor give way. The phrasing mimics off-the-record candor - “you know” works like a handshake, recruiting the listener into an inside conversation where the real story isn’t ideology, it’s management. By naming editors (Andres Martinez, Nick Goldberg) instead of hiding behind “the paper,” he personalizes what usually gets laundered into institutional fog. Accountability is the point, and so is discomfort.
The key move is the conditional: “if…were the least bit honest.” Scheer isn’t arguing about conservative ideas on their merits; he’s accusing the gatekeepers of mislabeling a directive as editorial judgment. The subtext is that the editorial page is being positioned not as a forum but as a product line, tuned to a market segment or a proprietor’s politics. “The publisher has told them” is the power sentence: it shifts the debate from culture-war theatrics to labor and hierarchy. Editors, in this telling, are middle managers executing a brand strategy while maintaining the public fiction of independent deliberation.
Contextually, it lands in the long American fight over whether newspapers are civic institutions or privately owned megaphones. Scheer’s cynicism isn’t just about bias; it’s about transparency. He’s demanding that ideological direction be admitted as policy, not smuggled in as neutral curation. The sting comes from how plausible it sounds: everyone suspects the owner sets the temperature; Scheer is saying the real scandal is pretending otherwise.
The key move is the conditional: “if…were the least bit honest.” Scheer isn’t arguing about conservative ideas on their merits; he’s accusing the gatekeepers of mislabeling a directive as editorial judgment. The subtext is that the editorial page is being positioned not as a forum but as a product line, tuned to a market segment or a proprietor’s politics. “The publisher has told them” is the power sentence: it shifts the debate from culture-war theatrics to labor and hierarchy. Editors, in this telling, are middle managers executing a brand strategy while maintaining the public fiction of independent deliberation.
Contextually, it lands in the long American fight over whether newspapers are civic institutions or privately owned megaphones. Scheer’s cynicism isn’t just about bias; it’s about transparency. He’s demanding that ideological direction be admitted as policy, not smuggled in as neutral curation. The sting comes from how plausible it sounds: everyone suspects the owner sets the temperature; Scheer is saying the real scandal is pretending otherwise.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
|---|
More Quotes by Robert
Add to List
