Daily Inspiration Quote by Michael Pollan

Pollan’s move here is a deflation tactic: he punctures the flattering paranoia that major outlets secretly run the country. The line works because it refuses both sides’ favorite story. Critics of “the media” get an easy villain; journalists get the comforting illusion that their work steers history. Pollan denies both, and in doing so he shifts attention from spectacle to structure.

The subtext is about misplaced agency. When people insist The New York Times “has power,” they’re often confessing a desire for a single control panel explaining a messy society. It’s psychologically neat: if an institution is steering outcomes, then your own choices, your community’s habits, and your leaders’ incentives can stay off the hook. Pollan’s comparison to blaming television is deliberately old-fashioned, almost quaint, and that’s the point: moral panics about media are recurring rituals. We keep swapping in new scapegoats - TV, video games, social media - because they’re visible, narratively satisfying targets.

Contextually, Pollan comes out of food politics, where “the media did it” is a common excuse on all sides: corporate PR blames sensational coverage; activists blame insufficient coverage; consumers blame advertising. Pollan is arguing that media influence is real but not omnipotent, and that blaming it becomes a way to avoid harder fights over policy, economics, and personal complicity. The sting is that he’s talking to elites as much as to the public: if you want to change outcomes, stop mythologizing the megaphone and start interrogating the systems that reward what gets amplified.