can hdnet possibly have that impact now? can farai and propublica and other web sites capture those gigantic stories and stay with them the way... >> no, they can't have the impact that coverage, say, of watergate, which was a widespread criminal conspiracy run out of the white house, including the president himself, exclamation point--no, it can't have that kind of impact because the competitive arena has become much larger and much fiercer. but what's needed here, frank, and you've touched on this a couple of times, and i hope we can come back to it, is most of us who are in journalism today were drawn to it by a lot of things, but not least of which the belief that a public journal is a public trust. that includes electronic journalism. this is a public trust. >> a public trust. >> a public trust, i would say a sacred public trust, but a public trust, to be operated at least in part in the public interest. the difference between today and yesterday, with the largest corporations that control most of the major news distrib

with us today, hdnet's dan rather, the bbc's katty kay, nbc's andrea mitchell and the "washington post"'s david ignatius. first up, on this ninth anniversary of 9/11, the gnawing hostilityy between some in this country and the muslim world became an outright obssion. here is the president friday defending his approach to that pastor's threat to burn the koran. >> this kind oaf behavior or threats of action put our young men and women in harm's way. and it's also the best imaginable recruiting tool for al qaeda. i hardly think we're the ones who elevated this story, but it is in the age of the internet something that can cause us profound damage around the world. and so we have to take it seriously. chris: is he right, dan rather? >> i think in the main he's right. one can quarrel about whether they by raising the profile gave it too much oxygen. overall give them high marks for how they handled it. chris: from the pastor's point of view this is what we wanted, an enga wmentith the president of the united states. i assume. did he win this battle? >> it certainly sounds like he wanted at