We now assume that when people turn on the evening news, they basically already know what the news is. They’ve heard it on the radio. They’ve seen it on the Internet. They’ve seen it on one of the cable companies. So that makes our job a bit different.
The best thing about the Congress is that it is the last place where you can have face-to-face interviews and interaction with the newsmakers themselves.
Obviously, if the commander makes certain decisions that the reporter thinks is inhibiting his right to report a legitimate story, he has to appeal to the commander’s boss to get that changed.
It’s no longer just reporting the headlines of the day, but trying to put the headlines into some context and to add some perspective into what they mean.
But if you’re going to go out on a military unit, you’ve got to allow yourself to be under the control of the commander because you really could put the troops in danger.
Any time you get into a presidential campaign and the stakes are so high, all candidates – they want to be in complete control whenever they can. And you can’t blame them for that.
I had an idea in the beginning to do a book about some of the events that I had covered, just various stories that I’ve covered. Reporters spend a lot of time telling each other tales about how they covered stories, and that’s what this book started out to be.
For sure, the American people have access to more information now than any other people who have ever lived on earth. And I think we do a pretty good job of sorting out what’s important.
But with 9/11, we found that people tended to come back to the networks and the people who had been our core viewers in the past came back and they have stayed with us.
And as a result, I guess I’m just kind of a rubberneck. I’m kind of a – someone who likes to see things and likes to see these events and talk to the people who make them happen. But I don’t think journalists are as important as the people they cover.
If you get asked a really tough question and you give a really good answer, you come off looking really good.