Daily Inspiration Quote by Amy Goodman

Goodman’s line lands like a civics lesson delivered in the middle of a street protest: plain, insistent, and strategically hard to disagree with. The pairing is the point. “Protect all journalists” names the physical and legal vulnerability that comes with covering power, especially when the state or a crowd decides the messenger is the enemy. Then she tightens the frame: protection isn’t a sentimental perk, it’s instrumental. Journalists “have to be allowed to do their jobs” recasts press freedom as a functional requirement for democracy, not a boutique right reserved for friendly outlets.

The subtext is a rebuke to selective outrage. The word “all” quietly challenges the tribal logic that treats reporters as either patriots or propagandists depending on whose side they’re seen to serve. It also pushes back on a familiar dodge: praising the First Amendment in the abstract while cheering arrests, intimidation, credential revocations, surveillance, or lawsuits that make reporting practically impossible.

Context matters because Goodman is not speaking from the safe distance of punditry. As a journalist associated with adversarial, movement-adjacent reporting, she’s acutely aware that “doing the job” often means filming police, documenting abuses, and asking questions institutions would rather bury. The sentence is built like a firewall: if you normalize interference with journalists you dislike, you’ve already authorized interference with the journalists you depend on. It’s a warning disguised as consensus.