The government's view is that the best time to announce bad news, news that it doesn't want the public to dwell on is late on a Friday, when it will wind up in the Saturday papers, which if you were readers, then the week day editions. A holiday weekend is even better.
American politics used to be an amateur sport. But somewhere along the way, we handed over to professionals all the things people used to do for free.
At the White House, everybody works for the same person. They're all part of the same company. But on Capitol Hill, they're all independent contractors. They all work for themselves. That's a formula for getting news.
One thing young people have to always keep in mind when deciding what they want to do with their lives is, is it fun? Is it something that I'm interested in? Is it something I enjoy?
And after about two years, I realized that creative writing was not going to help you ace those biological tests. So I switched over to journalism. I didn't graduate with honors, but I did graduate on time and with some doing.
My bladder cancer was related to smoking, and I think smoking kills people.
There's fierce competition between all the networks to get the guest who can bring the most pertinent information about whatever the story of the moment happens to be.
My job is to give everyone a chance to catch their breath and step back from all this and get back to work.
With Vietman, we found ourselves involved there before we really understood what was going on.
Had there been a reporter along with Lieutenant Calley when he massacred those people in Vietnam, I think that probably wouldn't have happened.
Obviously, if the commander makes certain decisions that the reporter thinks is inhibiting his right to report a legitimate story, he has to appeal to the commander's boss to get that changed.
But if you're going to go out on a military unit, you've got to allow yourself to be under the control of the commander because you really could put the troops in danger.
I can't think of any other job in journalism where the newsmakers come to you.
It's getting the right person that's the challenge.
Once we get them in the studio, you interview a person the same way you would interview another. You ask them a question. You let them answer. You try to listen closely and then ask a follow-up.
But with 9/11, we found that people tended to come back to the networks and the people who had been our core viewers in the past came back and they have stayed with us.
We now assume that when people turn on the evening news, they basically already know what the news is. They've heard it on the radio. They've seen it on the Internet. They've seen it on one of the cable companies. So that makes our job a bit different.
It's no longer just reporting the headlines of the day, but trying to put the headlines into some context and to add some perspective into what they mean.
In so many of the other beats these days, there are these layers of public relations people that you have to go through to get to the newsmakers themselves.
We're far from perfect. It's a human enterprise.
