"They said it was against the rules to take sides on a controversial issue. I said, 'I wish you had told me that during World War II, when I took sides against Hitler.'"
About this Quote
Neutrality gets sold as professionalism until the moment it starts sounding like cowardice. Howard K. Smith’s line is a neatly sprung trap: he lets the sanctimonious rule speak first, then detonates it with the one historical case where “taking sides” isn’t bias but basic moral literacy. By invoking World War II and Hitler, he doesn’t just win the argument; he exposes what the argument is really doing. A ban on “taking sides” isn’t a principle, it’s a posture designed to protect institutions from backlash, advertisers, or accusations of partisanship.
The subtext is a journalist’s quiet fury at a profession that sometimes confuses balance with virtue. Smith is poking at the reflex to treat all controversies as symmetrical debates between reasonable people. His punchline reminds you that some “issues” are controversial only because power insists they be framed that way. In that light, neutrality becomes an aesthetic choice that flatters the newsroom: look how above it all we are. But it can also become a moral abdication: refusing to name the villain because naming villains is “editorial.”
Context matters. Smith came of age when propaganda, fascism, and mass atrocity made the stakes of public information brutally clear. He’s not rejecting fairness; he’s rejecting the bureaucratic misuse of fairness as a gag order. The line lands because it redefines journalistic courage as the willingness to be accused of bias when reality has an ethical contour. If your rules would have kept you from opposing Hitler, your rules aren’t safeguarding truth; they’re safeguarding comfort.
The subtext is a journalist’s quiet fury at a profession that sometimes confuses balance with virtue. Smith is poking at the reflex to treat all controversies as symmetrical debates between reasonable people. His punchline reminds you that some “issues” are controversial only because power insists they be framed that way. In that light, neutrality becomes an aesthetic choice that flatters the newsroom: look how above it all we are. But it can also become a moral abdication: refusing to name the villain because naming villains is “editorial.”
Context matters. Smith came of age when propaganda, fascism, and mass atrocity made the stakes of public information brutally clear. He’s not rejecting fairness; he’s rejecting the bureaucratic misuse of fairness as a gag order. The line lands because it redefines journalistic courage as the willingness to be accused of bias when reality has an ethical contour. If your rules would have kept you from opposing Hitler, your rules aren’t safeguarding truth; they’re safeguarding comfort.
Quote Details
| Topic | War |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
More Quotes by Howard
Add to List
