Mostly, as I said, a desire to do a bit of good, and the quaint notion that this is what we signed up for, this is the business that we have chosen.

We turn now over the debate of the proposed Islamic center and mosque near Ground Zero....The controversy has raised profound questions about religious tolerance and prejudice in the United States.

And then theres always the crying and the weeping that we hear-children, women, even men. And these images and these sounds are always with me.

We in the press, by our power, can actually undermine leadership.

Objectivity means trying to give all sides a hearing. It does not, in my view, mean treating all sides as equal.

There are some situations one simply cannot be neutral about, because when you are neutral you are an accomplice. Objectivity doesn't mean treating all sides equally. It means giving each side a hearing.

But to be self-obsessed is simply not o.k. for the most important country in the world, the United States, which affects every other country in the world.