Secretary of State John Kerry lamented Friday that modern media makes it much harder for the government to disseminate its message.
“[B]ack when I was a kid, the president of the United States would — the press office would call CBS, Bill Paley, and say, ‘Give me a half hour on TV tonight,’ and you’d have ABC, NBC, and CBS, and public television,” Kerry told U.S. officials in Brussels.
“And they’d block the whole thing, and that was it,” he added. “[The] next day in the office, everybody would be talking about what the president said.”
“Today, if the president scheduled something like that, everybody goes to QVC or Netflix and … finds an alternative,” Kerry said.
“So it’s hard. It’s hard to build consensus,” he said. “It’s hard for leaders to compete with this incredible crashing crescendo of noise that is out there.”
Kerry also took what seemed to be a swipe at Donald Trump, who has dominated the media landscape over the last year, and is set to become the Republican nominee. Kerry didn’t mention Trump by name, but said some people in politics “have the ability to create their own facts.”
“And obviously, they’re not facts,” Kerry said. “But who’s going to tell the difference? Who’s the referee, so to speak?”
That said, Kerry said he loves his job of “serving mankind.”
“I feel privileged every day to be doing what I’m doing — the honor of serving country but also serving mankind and you all are doing that, trying to create peace and stability and build a better world,” he said. “I know it sounds a little cliche, but that is literally what we get up every day to go do.”
“And there are a whole bunch of people who, believe me, they’re bored with their jobs or they hate their jobs or they are constantly casting about,” Kerry added.
