And what it depends on, of course, is whether the story itself is worth the ethical compromise it requires and whether the competition is onto the story.

No matter what name we give it or how we judge it, a candidate's character is central to political reporting because it is central to a citizen's decision in voting.

Given what the media have put the country through this past decade, it must come as a surprise to most Americans that the press has a code of ethics.

The written tone and the spoken tone change and the reporters' disbelief in the veracity of the government spreads to the readers and the viewers.

In exchange for power, influence, command and a place in history, a president gives up the bulk of his privacy.

But the time has come for journalists to acknowledge that a zone of privacy does exist.

Most journalists now believe that a person's privacy zone gets smaller and smaller as the person becomes more and more powerful.

The relationship between press and politician - protected by the Constitution and designed to be happily adversarial - becomes sour, raw and confrontational.

Journalists, who are skeptical to begin with, simply do not like to be lied to or made fools of.

The ethics of editorial judgement, however, began to go though a sea change during the late 1970s and 80s when the Carter and Reagan Administrations de-regulated the television industry.

The networks found themselves having to compete for an increasingly Balkanized audience.

I am jealous of anyone who can make other people care so much.

I've got plenty of love in my life already in the form of my sons and a few good friends who I value dearly.

Let me love Thee so that the honour, riches, and pleasures of the world may seem unworthy even of hatred - may not even be encumbrances.

Position yourself to succeed first by building good relationships with the right people; and then put your effort and expertise behind that!

In the mouth of a bad dog fals often a good bone.

The heart is where is where the action is

You realize how much fun we did have, with no money at all. We'd stay in peoples' homes in Tangiers. When you're young, you invite yourself.

Your temptations are from the devil and from Hell; but your sufferings and afflictions are from God and Heaven.

Everything we are is anchored in our childhoods. The drama comes in how we deal with it. Are we slaves to our past, or can we rise above it? This is the stuff of great stories.

I never object to a certain degree of disputatiousness in a young man from the age of seventeen to that of four or five and twenty, provided I find him always arguing on one side of the question.