The relationship between press and politician - protected by the Constitution and designed to be happily adversarial - becomes sour, raw and confrontational.

In exchange for power, influence, command and a place in history, a president gives up the bulk of his privacy.

As electronic journalism came to be evaluated for its cost effectiveness, the network world began breaking up.

The ethics of editorial judgement, however, began to go though a sea change during the late 1970s and 80s when the Carter and Reagan Administrations de-regulated the television industry.

No matter what name we give it or how we judge it, a candidate's character is central to political reporting because it is central to a citizen's decision in voting.

For decades, the journalistic norm had been that the private lives of public officials remained private unless that life impinged on public performance.

But the time has come for journalists to acknowledge that a zone of privacy does exist.