It's the ratings, stupid, don't you know? They've got us putting more fuzz and wuzz on the air, cop-show stuff.

A free and truly independent press - fiercely independent when necessary - is the red beating heart of freedom and democracy.

I'm all news, all the time. Full power, tall tower. I want to break in when news breaks out. That's my agenda. Now, respectfully, when you start talking about a liberal agenda and all the, quote, 'liberal bias' in the media, I quite frankly, and I say this respectfully but candidly to you, I don't know what you're talking about.

Tonight, savagery in the streets of Iraq. Ten Americans die in a single day, four of them civilians murdered, mutilated and dragged through the streets....What drives American civilians to risk death in Iraq? In this economy it may be, for some, the only job they can find.

Covering the civil-rights movement was a mind- and eye-opener for me. Houston was a segregated society, as was Texas as a whole - some of it by law, a lot of it by fear and tradition. But there was no violence where I lived, and if there was hate, it was either concealed from me or I just didn't recognize it.

These guys [the Catholic church] make Enron look like altar boys.

Anyone who says network news cannot be profitable doesn't know what he is talking about. But anyone who says it must "always," make money is misguided and irresponsible.