We All Have More At Stake In

A Generation Ago, Or Two, When There Were Three Channels, Plus Pbs, And When You Needed - When You Needed 15 Million People To Make A Living, The Media Could Focus On The Broad Country. And Most People Had No Choice About Getting Political Information. It Was There At 6:30 Whether You Wanted It Or Not.

Journalism Can Go Right Up To The Door Of The Room In Which The Decisions Are Made. A Novel Can Go Inside The Room - And Inside The Character's Heads.

I Always Believed As A Speechwriter That If You Could Persuade The President To Commit Himself To Certain Words, He Would Feel Himself Committed To The Ideas That Underlay Those Words. And The Big Shock To Me Has Been That Although The President Said The Words, He Just Did Not Absorb The Ideas. And That Is The Root Of, Maybe, Everything.

We're Not Free Because Other People Are Nice, Maybe Other People Aren't Nice That Day. We're Free Because We Expect The Institutions Of Government To Work Impersonally. That We Expect People In Government To Understand They Don't Work For The President Or The Prime Minister, They Work For The Government. And The Government Is Always There.

Journalists Have To Do Their Job. And Journalists Have To Resist Emotionalism. You Have To Keep Your Cool And To Continue To Do Your Job Until You're Prevented.