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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Sexual behavior was also generally considered off limits.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.

The wise are wise only because they love. The fool are fools only because they think they can understand love.

I have met with some of them - very honest fellows, who, with all their stupidity, had a kind of intelligence and an upright good sense, which cannot be the characteristics of fools.

Prejudices are what fools use for reason.

The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes.

The surprising thing about young fools is how many survive to become old fools.

Silence is the virtue of fools.

There are more fools than knaves in the world, else the knaves would not have enough to live upon.

We must fight as a race for everything that makes for a better country and a better world. We are dreaming idiots and trusting fools to do anything less.

Nations have come under the control of haters and fools.

Only fools live in the past or carry envy to the present.

Take all the fools out of this world and there wouldn't be any fun living in it, or profit.

My grandmother had a Miss Margaret's School of Dance to teach tap and ballet to kids, but I never studied it. I was raised a Mormon and they're dancing fools. It's the only vice they have - dancing.

For Forms of Government let fools contest; whatever is best administered is best.

Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great a fool as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom.

The services in wartime are fit only for desperadoes, but in peace are only fit for fools.

For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

People who don't see their nature and imagine they can practice thoughtlessness all the time are lairs and fools.

Young men think old men are fools; but old men know young men are fools.

Words are wise men's counters, they do but reckon with them, but they are the money of fools.

I have great faith in fools; self-confidence my friends call it.

The world is not fair, and often fools, cowards, liars and the selfish hide in high places.

Rush Limbaugh is good for the party. Drive it all the way down, take it down as low as it can go, make complete fools of themselves, because it's always darkest before the dawn, and then maybe a moderate can come in and rescue them.

Fortune, seeing that she could not make fools wise, has made them lucky.

Despair is the conclusion of fools.

The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools.

We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.

Three things have been difficult to tame: the oceans, fools and women. We may soon be able to tame the oceans; fools and women will take a little longer.

Time makes fools of us all. Our only comfort is that greater shall come after us.

Get all the fools on your side and you can be elected to anything.

Fools admire, but men of sense approve.

The fools ran after me and I ran after the whores, foolish though I realized such a proceeding to be.

New Year's Resolution: To tolerate fools more gladly, provided this does not encourage them to take up more of my time.