The failures of the press have contributed immensely to the emergence of a talk-show nation, in which public discourse is reduced to ranting and raving and posturing. We now have a mainstream press whose news agenda is increasingly influenced by this netherworld.

You can't serve the public good without the truth as a bottom line.

The American Revolution and Declaration of Independence, it has often been argued, were fueled by the most radical of all American political ideas.

We are in the process of creating what deserves to be called the idiot culture. Not an idiot sub-culture, which every society has bubbling beneath the surface and which can provide harmless fun; but the culture itself. For the first time, the weird and the stupid and the coarse are becoming our cultural norm, even our cultural ideal.

I think all good reporting is the same thing - the best attainable version of the truth.

The reality is that the media are probably the most powerful of all our institutions today and they, or rather we [journalists], too often are squandering our power and ignoring our obligations. The consequence of our abdication of responsibility is the ugly spectacle of idiot culture!

Even at the end of a presidential election campaign, we have no way to know what Mitt Romney really believes.