The last time I appeared before this group I had just been made editor of New Media at Time Warner and I had one of these topics that was something like, "Cyberspace: Threat or Menace?" Great unanswerable questions. It's nice to have an answerable question, a question like "Is journalism broken?" because the answer is pretty simple -- it's yes. A slightly longer answer would be, yes, badly.

 I think what's happened is that over the past ten, fifteen years we've lost our credibility and our authority. The only thing we bring to market is our credibility and our authority, and once that's become even a little eroded, the product has less value. One thing that has helped cause this problem is that we've gotten into the habit, perhaps since the glory days of the civil rights coverage and Vietnam coverage and Watergate, of treating every issue that comes along as either a potential scandal or a political battle. Be it health care or free trade or the flat tax or anything else, instead of analyzing the topic seriously, we find that it's a little bit easier for us to seem like we're being objective and wise by saying, "How does this affect the Dole campaign? How does this affect the Buchanan campaign?"

However, here's the good news: this political race is absolutely wonderful. It's a big campaign about big ideas, serious ideas, and important ideas. It's about the role of federal government in our society and about how long the Republican revolution is going to extend. It's about taxes and protectionism and free trade and, most fundamentally of all, it's about the new economy, a new economy that's marked by globalization; about a new information age; about stockholders who control the way corporations have to run.

 These are issues that cause anxiety, but they're also issues worth exploring, and they can't be broken down into point/counterpoints or quick, easy assessments of who is helped politically. And I do think that with this campaign you are starting to see, I hope, a much better job at covering the important issues that are involved in this race.

 We have to look at how you find the common ground in America, the common facts that people can use in arguments. But also, instead of presenting everything as dissent, we have to occasionally try to do something like promote understanding and even promote a consensus that may be emerging. I think as we do that we gain a little bit of our credibility and a little bit of our authority back, and perhaps play the role in democracy that journalism has been expected to play.

I think it's understandable that the press has focused on the process of getting elected because the process can be very interesting. This began with Teddy White making the inner game of politics, and the struggle of both the advisers and the candidates to wage a crusade, into something that approached a wonderful, narrative tale. And so, I think we shouldn't apologize for covering that part of it. I mean, James Carville and George Stephanopoulos in the war room is interesting, and it's a good tale.

I do, however, think that this can lead to increasing cynicism. Because it makes everything in politics look like just tactics in a game. So we have to try to keep in mind that sometimes elections, especially this year, especially given this economy and this environment, sometimes elections are about bigger things than who can get the ad on most quickly, or whether a negative ad was able to counter a positive ad, or how you're going to spin something after a debate. Sometimes it's about more than just advisers and pollsters. Sometimes it's about the ideas as well. I think some of us have tried to, for example, look at Steve Forbes's ideas, his background, his thinking, and quit trying to predict whether he's going to win Arizona or not.

 In an article in Foreign Affairs called "What is America's Soft Power in the World?" Joseph Nye contrasts "soft power" with the hard power of military strength and, for that matter, tariffs and economic muscle. The soft power arises from the ideas and information that come from the United States, ideas that have a certain bit of credibility and that reflect the values that the world would like to emulate. That source of power comes partly through the authority and credibility of those of us in journalism and, for that matter, in any form of the media or telecommunication in which we're disseminating information. And I think as we become more cynical about our institutions here, we also risk people around the world becoming more cynical about the true power and values of the American society.

I believe very strongly that the American democratic system works, can work. I believe in the values that are basically the core values of people in this nation. And I don't believe we should be ashamed to embrace the democratic system. Good journalism is a part of the democratic system, because democracy depends on having a common body of credible information.

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