If you want a friend, get a dog.

[keannu]

Source : Korean Education Broadcasting System, KSAT Completion 86-20

If you want a friend, get a dog. Journalism professors and professionals have shared this humorous, colloquial saying with countless neophytes in classrooms and newsrooms because it points to a serious underpinning. The media generally and reporters in particular do not need to be loved or even to have their motives fully understood in order to carry out their obligations to inform the public. But, according to Stephen Klaidman and Tom Beauchamp in The Virtuous Journalist, it is essential that the public trust the press and see it as credible in its role as watchdog over governments and their agencies. Credibility is an attitude, a belief that citizens hold about whether the news media legitimately have the power to call out elected officials or others in high positions who are not playing by the rules. In order to be seen as legitimate, the media must be seen as truthful, accurate, unbiased, and fair.

What does the underlined mean? How is it related to the theme of this passage?

 

[SoothingDave]

President Lyndon Johnson said this. More specifically, "If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog."

Meaning that people there are there for their own agendas, not to be your friend.

 

[GoesStation]

I'm reading former senator Al Franken's book, Giant of the Senate. He expresses the opposite view: to his surprise, he found that he made friends with senators whose politics he abhored. He found that being on genuinely friendly terms with them made it possible to cooperate occasionally on the few matters on which they agreed.