She was totally ill-advised to do that. First, let’s take it from the audience’s standpoint. If she thinks that airing bin Laden’s statements is going to lose her public support in the United States, then she doesn’t understand the United States. If she thinks that the whole rest of the world is somehow not going to hear the bin Laden tapes because the US networks are not airing them, that’s just false. If she thinks that it is not important for Americans to hear what bin Laden says or to hear what the rest of the world for that matter says about the United States, then I think she is mistaken. If she thinks that Al Qaeda spies are somehow passing secret messages by the way bin Laden winks or by the way that he uses his language, you can go to AOL and dial up Al-Jazeera television and see it for yourself. It is not like terrorists have no way of getting bin Laden’s tape everywhere in the world or even at the Starbucks down the street. She wasn’t protecting people from anything.

Terrorists are going to find their way to get their information out, Americans are not going to be swayed by it, and it’s important for Americans to know what is being said about them. So, all in all, Condoleezza Rice, if she had spent more time thinking about it, perhaps would have made a different decision.

In an attempt to be objective, Reuters News Agency caused some controversy with its policy refusing to refer to the perpetrators of the September 11 attacks as terrorists, arguing that one person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter. What is your reaction?

I think that’s baloney. The definition of terrorism is an attack that kills innocent people to make a point, however valid the point may be. People who go out to commit those types of acts are terrorists, no matter who is committing the crime. Those are terrorist acts committed by terrorists. Period.

Let us turn to the business aspect of the industry. Between the emphasis on deadlines, marketing, and advertising revenue, do you feel that the domination of entertainment conglomerates had a corrosive effect on journalism?

The business is becoming bigger every day. It has changed radically from the time the founders started the companies, not only in terms of the mission and making the profit but also in terms of increasing the profit. There are extraordinary business pressures that did not exist in years past. There are companies that make 30 percent profit, and in the following year, if they make 40 percent, those profits may not be of value to the company because so much depends on the stock price. Little companies are just getting swallowed up to become parts of bigger companies. Some businesses have problems living up to percentage growth rates, and in this business you’re dealing with audiences that are shrinking. There is only so much advertising to be sold for so many dollars.

[In terms of the business executives], everyone has their own responsibility and their own goals and missions. Sometimes they conflict, and sometimes the CEOs are not going to tell the business people what the journalism side of a dispute is. Television networks have an extraordinary amount of exclusivity and there is a tremendous oligarchy at play. They’re given a lot by the government and told they owe something back. The argument is, “What do they owe back?” and that is what has not been defined yet. Perhaps the only way we will come to terms with it is when the public stands up and says, “We’re going to define what you owe us for the billions of dollars of free bandwidth.”

You’ve been in the position of both a journalist and an executive. How do you see the industry reconciling perhaps the different goals of the two groups to achieve news that people will watch?

I really believe that the answer to improve profits is to do better and more responsible news. There is an entire audience that has decided that it is not worth their time to be glued to the television sets for the evening news and part of the fault lies in the networks for not giving them what they need.