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.

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

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

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.

Journalists, who are skeptical to begin with, simply do not like to be lied to or made fools of.

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