"Speaking Truth to Power": Reflections on a Phrase

The phrase "speaking truth to power" has long seemed to me one of those phrases that, like a good deal else in contemporary language, gives away the reality behind society's democratic pretenses--and indeed, shows how comfortable even ostensible progressives are with that very un-democratic way of thinking that prevails. In a democratic society, after all, power rests with the public--but the phrase "speaking truth to power" always denotes speaking truth to a power elite of the kind that those democratic pretenses say does not exist, while the speakers--journalists, for example--are cast in a particular relation to that elite, as their courtiers. Enjoined to "speak truth to power" it seems that they are being told not to act as something other than courtiers, but to be the good courtier who tells the potentate what they need to hear, however unpleasant the listener may find it, rather than what will simply advance them personally.

Surely those who purport to be progressives should set their sets a little higher than that for their media.