Dictators fall when they're overconfident; they stay in power when they're paranoid.
Masha GessenRead
I kept thinking, I'm not going to do political journalism, because there's no way to keep my principles and be a political journalist, so I'll edit a popular science magazine. This will be my salvation, and I'll emerge with my integrity intact. That didn't even happen.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects the struggle of maintaining integrity while engaging in journalism, particularly political journalism, and highlights the challenges of balancing personal principles with professional roles.
Masha Gessen's quote illustrates the deep conflict many journalists face when navigating the world of political reporting. The desire to preserve one's integrity often clashes with the reality of the profession, where compromises are frequent. Gessen expresses a sense of disillusionment, having believed that editing a science magazine would shield them from ethical dilemmas, only to discover that integrity is difficult to maintain in any form of journalism. This speaks to the broader challenges of staying true to one's values in the pursuit of a career.
Themes
IntegrityJournalismPoliticsPrinciplesDisillusionment
In practice
Example use cases
In a public lecture about ethical journalism, one might quote Gessen to emphasize the importance of integrity in reporting.
More from Masha Gessen
All quotes →When you lose your freedom, you lose, first and foremost, the opportunity to choose the company you keep.
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There's the hypothesis that things just keep happening to Russians, things that keep turning them into the same kind of subjects, as opposed to citizens. The more credible hypothesis, I think, is that there is a kind of trauma, a social trauma that is passed on from generation to generation.
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We learn to think of history as something that has already happened, to other people. Our own moment, filled as it is with minutiae destined to be forgotten, always looks smaller in comparison.
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Russia, at the start of the 21st century, at least in its larger cities, very much resembled the United States of the early 1990s: being gay was no longer criminal or shameful, but it was still not a topic for polite conversation or public discussion.
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... fighting for gay marriage generally involves lying about what we are going to do with marriage when we get there-because we lie that the institution of marriage is not going to change, and that is a lie. The institution of marriage is going to change, and it should change. And again, I don't think it should exist.
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