If we don't have an informed electorate we don't have a democracy. So I don't care how people get the information, as long as they get it. I'm just doing it my particular way and I feel lucky I can do it the way I want to do it.
Interpretation
Informed citizens are essential for a functioning democracy, regardless of how they obtain their knowledge.
Jim Lehrer's quote emphasizes the importance of an informed electorate in maintaining a healthy democracy. He expresses that the method by which individuals acquire information is less significant than ensuring they are conscious and educated participants in the democratic process, highlighting his own unique approach to disseminating this information with a sense of gratitude for his ability to contribute.
In practice
In a speech advocating for voter education initiatives.
Take risks ... be willing to put your mind and your spirit, your time and your energy, your stomach and your emotions on the line. To search for a safe place, to search for an end to a rainbow, is to search for a place that you will hate once you find it. The soul must be nourished along with the bank account and the resume. The best nourishment for any soul is to create your own risks.
Well, I don't know about objectivity, but I know for certain that it's always possible for a professional journalist who understands what he or she's up to to be fair, and that's the key word. Fairness to individuals, fairness to ideas, and to issues and whatever - that is critical, and that is also part and parcel of what the job.
When all the objectives of government include the achievement of equality - other than equality before the law - that government poses a threat to liberty.
Governments don't control people like they used to.
Those that deem politics beneath their dignity are doomed to be governed by those of lesser talents.
Only we, the public, can force our representatives to reverse their abdication of the war powers that the Constitution gives exclusively to the Congress.
There is no more dangerous thing for a democracy than a foreign policy based on presidential preventive war.
Inequality also distorts our democracy. It gives an outsized voice to the few who can afford high-priced lobbyists and unlimited campaign contributions, and runs the risk of selling out our democracy to the highest bidder. And it leaves everyone else rightly suspicious that the system in Washington is rigged against them - that our elected representatives aren't looking out for the interests of most Americans.
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