Good evening. We begin tonight...

There are a lot of people who think our job is to reassure the public every night that their home, their community and their nation is safe. I don't subscribe to that at all. I subscribe to leaving people with essentially — sorry it's a cliche — a rough draft of history. Some days it's reassuring, some days it's absolutely destructive.

"I'm a little concerned about this notion everybody wants us to be objective," Jennings said. Jennings said that everyone — even journalists — have points of view through which they filter their perception of the news. It could be race, sex or income. But, he said, reporters are ideally trained to be as objective as possible. "And when we don't think we can be fully objective, to be fair."

There will be good days and bad, which means that some days I may be cranky and some days really cranky!

I don't think anybody who looks carefully at us thinks that we are a left-wing or a right-wing organization.

We have been criticized, a little bit to my surprise, by people who think I was not enough pro-war. That is simply not the way I think of this role. This role is designed to question the behavior of government officials on behalf of the public. I think people who have done this and all jobs in journalism have believed that.

Are we out of step with the administration because we do not comport completely to their political point of view?... So they criticize us for it. It goes with the territory, and if we get a groundswell we begin to look at ourselves.

I don't think the public realizes how much soul-searching goes on in news organizations about what is the right thing to do.