MANHATTAN, KAN. ? The publisher of The New York Times complained Monday about what he called a cheapening of the public debate but said he thought news organizations could improve the situation.

Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., speaking at Kansas State University, said newspapers and broadcast stations that try to give unbiased information faced increased skepticism and even cynicism from the public.

He acknowledged that news organizations’ own mistakes, including a scandal last year involving a Times reporter’s plagiarism and fabrication of facts, added to the skepticism.

But he said many journalists were aware of the problems facing the profession and wanted to change things.

“What I’ve come to understand is that reporters and editors are by their very nature great optimists and incurable romantics,” he said. “We continue to care deeply about the world and its many problems, and we passionately believe that we have the ability to change humankind’s destiny and improve our collective quality of life.”

The publisher spoke to about 500 people in a lecture series named for Alf Landon, the former Kansas governor who was the Republican presidential nominee in 1936.

Sulzberger, publisher of The Times since 1992 and chairman of The New York Times Co. since 1997, expressed concern about what he said was the growing shrillness of political debate.

“It is growing near to impossible to thoughtfully address our most pressing challenges,” Sulzberger said. “The result is legislative gridlock at the federal level, at the state level and at the city level.”

Sulzberger said as some news organizations enjoyed being “another actor in the political theater of the absurd,” people either became disengaged or they vent their frustrations themselves.

He said that what upset him after the Jayson Blair plagiarism scandal was that The Times received relatively few calls from people mentioned in Blair’s stories.

“They just generally assumed that newspapers operated that way,” he said.