Public debate on TV in western societies has long been reduced to the spectacle of the 1% talking to each other: millionaire journalists pretending to hold even wealthier politicians accountable. This usually constrains debate exactly the way one would expect, but gruesome truths are sometimes revealed, inadvertently, because rotten values are shared by elite journalists and western officials.

Consider the infamous exchange between Madeleine Albright and Lesley Stahl in May of 1996:

Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?

Madeleine Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it.

Albright was then U.S. Ambassador to the UN. About a year after this interview she was promoted and became Secretary of State under Bill Clinton.

In 2004, Amy Goodman confronted Albright over her remark. “It was a stupid statement. I never should have made it…” said Albright.

Of course it was stupid of Albright to display her total disregard for Iraqi lives. A competent state terrorist would have claimed the death toll was lower and argued that any humanitarian disaster was entirely Saddam Hussein’s fault. Albright unmasked herself because she was too comfortable with a TV journalist like Stahl. But did the chilling inhumanity Albright revealed have any discernible impact on Stahl? The answer is no.