Wealth & Money Quote by Robert Scheer

“We talk about a free press” opens like a civics lesson and swerves into a charge sheet. Scheer’s intent isn’t to defend journalism in the abstract; it’s to call out a particular class of media operators who monetize the prestige of “free press” while ducking accountability. The repeated “they hide” is doing heavy work: it paints these figures as both powerful and cowardly, benefiting from the institution’s protections without embracing its obligations. Freedom, in this framing, becomes a brand shield.

The phrasing is deliberately blunt, almost street-level, because Scheer is arguing that the betrayal is not theoretical. “Make a lot of money off the media” yanks the conversation from lofty First Amendment ideals to incentives: clicks, access, ad revenue, status. He’s suggesting that what passes for press freedom rhetoric can be a convenient alibi for shoddy or bad-faith output. “Slogans” is the key word; it implies that the language of liberty has been flattened into marketing copy, a ritual invocation used to stop criticism before it starts.

Then comes the crude, strategic profanity of “crap” and the blunt final judgment: “insulting to the readers.” Scheer’s subtext is that the real victim of media opportunism isn’t the press, and it isn’t even the subject of the “garbage” content; it’s the public being treated as a captive market. The context is a long-running intramural fight inside journalism: whether “free press” means freedom from government only, or also freedom from the industry’s own self-serving myths.