"In recent days, some people have been saying that I'm not ready to face the political press. Some people say that I'm not ready to play in the slime, the dirt, the mudslinging that the Republicans, and others, have made into politics-as-usual.

"Maybe they're right that others are better at playing the mudslinging game. Maybe they're right that others can manipulate the media cycle better, that others are better friends with the mainstream media. Certainly the press thinks so: one of them even said, "The press loves John McCain. We're his base." But I don't think it's the role of an honest politician to try and co-opt the media by playing their game. Let me tell you why.

"The danger of these long political seasons is that the media only cares about the most recent political spin cycle, and the longer these campaigns go, the less interested the media is in real issues.

"Now, in the last debate the media asked me a question about flag pins. The implication was that I don't love America, and that's an insinuation that, quite frankly, angers me. Who I am -- the families that I came from, and the man I have become -- is only possible because of America. Nowhere else in the world could my life have come to be, and what I owe America is no less than the debt of who I am.

"But the media wasn't willing to tar me with the brush of patriotism directly. They didn't want their fingerprints on that. Instead, they had an average voter, Mrs. Nash McCabe, ask the question. Mrs. McCabe was quoted in a New York Times article about whether I wear flag pins on my lapel or not, and so that's who ABC decided to use to let their journalists go on to slime me. And, again, the implication was that this is what Americans are going to base their votes on, that this is what they care about.

"Now, Mrs. McCabe is not supporting me. She's supporting Hillary. But she's not doing so because of flag pins. After the debate, the McClatchy news service interviewed Mrs. McCabe and found out what she's really worried about. Her husband was a coal miner, until he was injured in an accident in the mine. He's been disabled ever since, he's fought for his life against pain, against heart damage, and now against a brain tumor. He was injured in 1983; they had to fight for eight years to get disability payments. They racked up massive medical bills, they're facing hard choices about his treatment.

"Mrs. McCabe worked hard for those twenty-five years. She started at a cleaning company and worked her way to a manager's position, before they laid her off in 2000. The Bush economy hasn't been good to hard workers: after two and a half years, she found a job -- and then got laid off again. They have to borrow money from their parents, they're trying to get help from a local food bank. And she's not just worried about herself -- she sees people around her who have sick family members, or who are losing their homes because of hedge fund greed. She sees what the war in Iraq has done to the fabric of America, and she sees that John McCain is just more of the same.

"It's not about a flag pin. It's about the country behind that flag. But the media doesn't want Mrs. McCabe to tell her story. The media doesn't live in the America that worries about health care, that worries about getting laid off, or making sure the groceries stretch to the next disability check, or that sees young men and women who come back from Iraq wounded in body, in mind, and in the soul.

"In the last debate, one of the journalists was very concerned that we don't ask people making $200,000 a year to help pay for the costs of keeping up America. Maybe he doesn't know that the median household income in America is about 25% of that. But the media doesn't live in that America.

"John McCain works very hard to keep the media entertained. But it's not the media millionaires in New York and Washington that a President should be concerned with: it's the Mrs. McCabes of America, who work hard, play by the rules, and then find themselves losing ground because of the Republicans in Washington and the hedge funds in their offshore tax havens.

"We depend on the journalists of America to be honest brokers for the people, to help us understand the issues we're facing. We expect them to be tough, but we also expect them to be tough in the service of the people.

"America has a history of great journalism. In the days of the founding fathers, we had a vibrant, even rough-and-tumble press. We read Ernie Pyle reporting from the frontlines of Italy. We heard Edward R. Murrow on the rooftops of London amidst Hitler's bombs, and saw him return to America to take on McCarthy and the radical right. We remember Walter Cronkite on the television when Kennedy was shot, Dan Rather reporting from the mountains of Afghanistan, and the Washington Post's revelations about Watergate. The press has a proud history in America. We don't expect them to bring coffee and doughnuts to the Republicans and questions about trivial scandals-of-the-day to Democrats. When they do so, they're trivializing their own calling.

"We've had twenty-six Democratic debates, and we're going to more before we're done. Most of these have been good debates that informed and enlightened the American people as to the policy difference between me and other Democratic candidates. But as we saw in the last debate, the media has a desire to elevate the trivial, to avoid difficult policy questions and to turn the Presidency into another reality tv show. But this isn't a game. Iraq isn't a game. Afghanistan isn't a game. The American economy isn't a game. Caring for our sick and protecting our children isn't a game. And we can't let them make it a game.

"So bring on the debates. But I pledge to you that I'm going to fight against every trick the press uses to trivialize what we're doing, and I ask you to do the same. Let them know that you're watching, and judging, and acting.

"Thank you all."