Jim Lehrer

As I say, I'm a discourse advocate. What form it comes is less important to me than the fact that there is discourse. 

Best I can do for them is to give them every piece of information I can find and let them make the judgments. That's just my basic view of my function as a journalist. 

Everyone should get their news however they want to and in whatever form they want. I'm not going to sit back in judgment of other people and the way they do it. 

I have great faith in the intelligence of the American viewer and reader to put two and two together and come up with four. 

I started as a print reporter. 

I'm a journalist and that's what I do. 

I'm an expert on the NewsHour and it isn't how I practice journalism. I am not involved in the story. I serve only as a reporter or someone asking questions. I am not the story. 

I'm in the civil discourse business. I think it takes all kinds. And more power to everybody.

If we don't have an informed electorate we don't have a democracy. So I don't care how people get the information, as long as they get it. I'm just doing it my particular way and I feel lucky I can do it the way I want to do it. 

Most of the stories I have covered in 45 years have been gray stories. 

My own view, there is a need for and a demonstrated need for more journalism now than there ever has been. 

On a daily basis there are some huge ones that are, sure, from time to time, but it is helping the reader sort through all this sort of gray stuff out there. 

People can get their news any way they want. What I love about what's happened is that there are so many different avenues, there are so many different outlets, so many different ways to debate and discuss and to inquire about any given news story. 

People can say anything they want to. If they don't want to get the news from me, get it from somebody else. It's not something I'm going to worry about, I'm sorry.