Sarah Palin has got me thinking about how journalists are acting these days.

Last week, a radio interviewer asked her this:

“Governor, the Gibson and the Couric interviews struck many as sort of pop quizzes designed to embarrass you as opposed to interviews. Do you share that opinion?”

Palin answered: “Well, I have a degree in journalism also, so it surprises me that so much has changed since I received my education in journalistic ethics all those years ago.”

Unlike Palin, I did not get such a degree. After studying political science in college, I applied to journalism graduate school at Columbia University. They said no. I’m still hoping to one day become editor-in-chief of The New York Times so I can send Columbia a note saying, “So there.”

Still, I’ve been practicing journalism since high school.

Is Palin right? Have our ethics changed?

This year’s politics have gotten so polarized I’d like to leave the campaign aside for most of this column and talk about it in general.

Basically, the question is whether we’ve gotten too caught up in playing “gotcha.”

In truth, one of the first things you learn in journalism is to ask hard questions. I spent the summer after my junior year in high school at a journalism program at Northwestern University, and a key focus was to bring in guests to be grilled at big “press conferences.”

On the last night, they got the Illinois governor himself. The staff felt this would be the penultimate test. Could we kids play hardball with a big leaguer? But we were 18 or so, and most had found a boyfriend or girlfriend. So as the governor’s speech ended, everyone began to whisper: No questions. Everyone wanted time to go make out in the bushes before our last curfew. We were complete morons.

By the time I entered journalism full time, my generation of reporters was more serious about the art of the hard question. Perhaps no new “class” of journalists has ever been more serious.

It was 1974, and the Washington Post’s Woodward and Bernstein were national heroes for exposing Watergate.

Inspired, folks flooded into the profession to perform the noble role of watchdogging authority.

I’m guessing most people agree that’s one of the most important elements of our democracy. In my career, I’ve traveled for my newspaper to a dozen countries that have severe limits on freedom of the press. In Ethiopia, I was assigned a government minder. In the Sudan, telex operators read my stories and in several cases, refused to send them. In Romania, I was arrested and thrown out of the country for trying to interview a dissident. In all these places and others, the media were government-run so you can imagine how few hard questions were asked of officials.

I noticed an interesting pattern as a result. Every one of these countries was a mess — economically and environmentally. Going from West Berlin to East was like going back 40 years in time. That’s what happens when no one’s allowed to hold government accountable.

And it’s not just a matter of exposing malfeasance. Hard questions — even curveballs — ensure that those who want to run our country have to prove they’re up to the job.

Smart reporters know that even the simplest question can be the toughest one to field. In 1979, when Teddy Kennedy decided to run for the White House, TV journalist Roger Mudd began an interview by asking him why. Kennedy gave an odd, rambling answer that many say cratered his chances by proving he wasn’t ready for prime time. If the same thing happened to a candidate in the current race, partisans would call it a gotcha question. Things have gotten so toxic that anytime a nominee trips up, their supporters blame the questioner.

First people blamed Charlie Gibson for being too hard on Barack Obama during one of his Hillary Clinton debates, and now they’re blaming him for being too hard on Palin. To me, that’s proof people in this campaign are too quick to pile on the media.

Look, this is presidential politics. It’s the NFL. You have to be ready to face the tough hits.

But you know what? There are times when journalists do go too far.

In 1980, I remember speaking with Illinois Sen. Adlai Stevenson III, who decided not to run for a second U.S. Senate term although he was considered the favorite. I asked him why. He said it had become hard to discuss policy in part because reporters cared less about issues than catching politicians in missteps so they could be a Woodward-and-Bernstein for the day.

A good recent example was a story written about John McCain by The New York Times last February implying he had an affair with a female telecommunications lobbyist. It was a big controversy not just because of the charges, but because the story’s only proof were two one-time McCain aides saying they were uncomfortable with the woman being around. I wrote a column saying the Times didn’t have it, and shouldn’t have run it. I remember someone calling a radio talk show about the story that week, saying simply, “This is why people don’t read newspapers anymore.”

We can’t be so arrogant in this business as to shrug that off and just say we stand by the story, like the Times did. It hurts our credibility, and far more important, it can bring down the level of the national discourse.

On the other hand, I think the Times was legitimate to run its more recent story on John McCain’s love of gambling, revealing how he won thousands at a high-stakes Foxwoods craps table a few years ago in a what for him was a typical marathon session that went until 2:30 a.m. — and that he was there with a Pequot lobbyist after having played a critical role in shaping federal gaming laws.

Those were both tough, negative stories, but one, I think, was fair, and one wasn’t.

In journalism, we don’t often enough use that word. In fact, we rarely do.

We should.

It’s our job to confront pols with tough, challenging questions and stories — tough enough even to trip them up.

As long as they’re also fair.

mpatinkin@projo.com