Most journalists now believe that a person's privacy zone gets smaller and smaller as the person becomes more and more powerful.

Given what the media have put the country through this past decade, it must come as a surprise to most Americans that the press has a code of ethics.

The networks found themselves having to compete for an increasingly Balkanized audience.

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

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.

The written tone and the spoken tone change and the reporters' disbelief in the veracity of the government spreads to the readers and the viewers.

And what it depends on, of course, is whether the story itself is worth the ethical compromise it requires and whether the competition is onto the story.