'These boat people,' says the government of Hong Kong, 'they all want to go to America.' Well, I swear I don't know why, do you? I mean, take Vietnam. Why would any Vietnamese come to America after what American did to Vietnam? Don't they remember My Lai, napalm, Sylvester Stallone?

There is a gentle absurdity about Washington, D.C., and it is easy to develop affection for the place, if you can forget that the consequences of what goes on there are real, whereas what goes on there may not be.

Some of the qualities that go into making a good reporter - aggressiveness, a certain sneakiness, a secretive nature, nosiness, the ability to find out that which someone wants hidden, the inability to take 'no' with any sort of grace, a taste for gossip, rudeness, a fair disdain for what people will think of you and an occasional and calculated disregard for rules - are also qualities that go into making a very antisocial human being.

Putting people in a room and strapping wires to their wrist to find out if I make them tingle when I'm telling them about Beirut is a long way from Edward R. Murrow.

'These boat people,' says the government of Hong Kong, 'they all want to go to America.' Well, I swear I don't know why, do you? I mean, take Vietnam. Why would any Vietnamese come to America after what American did to Vietnam? Don't they remember My Lai, napalm, Sylvester Stallone?

I think laughter may be a form of courage. As humans we sometimes stand tall and look into the sun and laugh, and I think we are never more brave than when we do that.

We tried to do the news without frills, without fluffy hairdos, without graphics. It does say something about our business that is not very pretty. It didn't matter how good the show was. What counted was money.