If we have no respect for our viewers, then how can we have any respect for ourselves and what we do?

What Americans don't care much about is the piffle we put on TV these days, what they don't care about is boring, irrelevant, badly told stories, and what they really hate is the presumption that they're too stupid to know the difference.

If you have a child, I said, you have a responsibility at least to stay alive.

What we do and say and show really matters.

Indeed in the full flush of journalistic passion and conviction I once told an interviewer that of course I would never get married. And I most definitely would never have children.

Objectivity doesn't mean treating all sides equally. It means giving each side a hearing.

I believe America will always win the war. It's a superpower that no one can challenge. The real challenge is for the United States to win the peace.