"The sea change that has come is the information age. We don't have to just read The New York Times anymore. We can pull up something on the Internet and get any news that we like"
About this Quote
Du Pont’s “sea change” line has the brash optimism of early Internet politics: a patrician Republican marveling at a new machine that, he implies, will finally loosen the grip of elite gatekeepers. “We don’t have to just read The New York Times anymore” isn’t really about one newspaper. It’s a stand-in for a whole ecosystem of credentialed authority - coastal, institutional, and implicitly liberal - that many conservatives felt had monopolized the national narrative. The sentence builds a clean villain and then offers liberation by browser tab.
What makes the quote work is how it equates choice with empowerment. “Any news that we like” sounds democratic, even consumer-friendly, as if information were a buffet and citizenship a matter of selecting the right dish. The subtext is less about pluralism than about bypass: if you distrust intermediaries, the Internet becomes not just a tool but a moral argument. You don’t need editors; you need access.
Context matters. Du Pont came up in an era when network anchors and a handful of major papers functioned as common reference points. The 1990s and early 2000s promised “disintermediation,” and politicians framed it as freedom from bias. With hindsight, the phrasing “news that we like” reads like an accidental prophecy of filter bubbles, where preference starts to outrank verification. Du Pont is selling a future where more voices mean more truth; the irony is that the same abundance can also mean more ways to be sure you’re already right.
What makes the quote work is how it equates choice with empowerment. “Any news that we like” sounds democratic, even consumer-friendly, as if information were a buffet and citizenship a matter of selecting the right dish. The subtext is less about pluralism than about bypass: if you distrust intermediaries, the Internet becomes not just a tool but a moral argument. You don’t need editors; you need access.
Context matters. Du Pont came up in an era when network anchors and a handful of major papers functioned as common reference points. The 1990s and early 2000s promised “disintermediation,” and politicians framed it as freedom from bias. With hindsight, the phrasing “news that we like” reads like an accidental prophecy of filter bubbles, where preference starts to outrank verification. Du Pont is selling a future where more voices mean more truth; the irony is that the same abundance can also mean more ways to be sure you’re already right.
Quote Details
| Topic | Internet |
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