Transcripts For CSPAN Domestic And International News Coverage 20240622

The case was made long ago, and among the most eloquent proponents was john milton and his ideas that have set the course for our own principles today. In 1644, he wrote this, give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience above all liberties. Today in much of the world, that liberty is either nonexistent or in jeopardy. Let me start by telling you about two recent encounters of mine. In january of last year, i spoke with a leading figure in the governance of the internet. We talked about surveillance by the National Security agency and how the agency had cap to so voraciously into International Data networks. This was and tapped into so voraciously into International Data networks. I was interested in what this official was hearing as he traveled the world in the aftermath of the disclosures that originated with edward snowden. His massive leak of highly classified documents had revealed some of this nations most sensitive National Security secrets. Much of the worldwide reaction until that point had fallen into the category of outrage, rights activists and government officialss had deprived the u. S. Governments aggression intrusion into the privacy of citizens of other countries. Foreign governments protested that even the privacy of president s and Prime Ministers and countries that were our allies had been breached. The nsa had listened in on their phone conversations. As this internet official traveled asia, outrage was not what he heard. What did he hear . Jealousy, leaders told him that we have excellent computer scientists. Why havent we been able to do this . They aspire to monitor their own citizens as skillfully as the u. S. Government have. So that is story number one. Now story number two. Early this summer, i was visiting in washington by the owners, editors, and Legal Counsel of a leading newspaper and ecuador. They sought to bring attention to the ways in which the government of ecuador was strangling the press, dictating what it prints, threatening crippling fines, pressuring Media Outlets in hopes that they would become docile, differential, compliant. This june, the newspaper was fined 350,000 by the government on the grounds that it failed to satisfied all requirements for publishing a response by the government to one of its stories. A twoyearold communication law that provides that they have the right to respond. In this case, the newspaper had published a story about Ecuadors Health care system under the headline, 1. 7 billion in federal debt impairs Health Care System. The paper had sought to Interview Health system officials tried to publication, even sending a list of questions. The request went unanswered. When the story was published, it was sharply criticized by ecuadors president. He even question the statistics, statistics that as it turned out came directly from the Health Care System itself. Then the secretary of communications ordered the newspaper to publish a rebuttal, which it did. But the rebuttal did not carry a summary, also written by the secretary of communications, and it did not carry a headline crafted by the secretary that accompanied its rebuttal. The secretariat ordered it summary published, and it ordered its headline published, and the newspaper then complied. So the headline in red, the Health Care System has made progress and will improve even more in the coming years. [laughter] marty the newspaper now had to pay a fine for allegedly noncompliance with the law regarding rebuttals, a fine equivalent to 10 of its average revenue in the previous quarter, so the fine totaled 350,000. With each recurrence of a particular offense, a fine is doubled. It can continue doubling without limit. Fines and pressure are having the intended effect. In 2014, 4 Media Outlets close, largely as a result of this socalled organic comedic organic communications law. In short, the government will break it. The newspapers legal maneuvers, creeping appropriation, and rightly so. The two stories i told show something about Free Expression. It can be threaten from many directions, and that is what is happening. Not long ago, the worlds hoped for better. We seem to be entering a new era of Free Expression brought about by the internet, social media, and smartphones. Some concluded that Citizens Communications would flourish in a way previously unimagined, and that government, even the most autocratic, would be denied the tight control the cap them in power. This idea took firm root that kept them in power. This idea took firm root in 2010 with the tunisian revolution and then spread throughout the world. With protest in egypt against the machine regime, the world marveled at the impact of social media, how it could be used to facilitate Free Expression, how it might overcome repression. It was a hopeful time for those who believed in the liberating power of technology over the traditional too often tyrannical powers of government. Truth moves faster than lies and propaganda becomes flammable wrote paul mason in 2011. He said, not only is the network more powerful than the hierarchy, but the Ad Hoc Network has become easier to form. In a book entitled democracys fourth wave, Digital Media and the arab spring, a professor at the university of washington and a doctoral student noted, social media alone did not cause the people in north africa, but information technologies, including mobile phones and the internet, altered the capacity of citizens and Civil Society actors. The authors of those commentaries also know that he the technology also gave governments the ability to monitor citizens and extinguish voices and movements. Professor howards noted in one interview that authoritarian regimes have come to value Digital Media to. Bahrain, saudi arabia, syria, they observed how democracy advocates were using social media and developed Counter Insurgency strategies that allow them to mislead and entrap protesters. Just the other week, we published a series on threats to press freedom. The security of the arab world now exploit sophisticated Surveillance Technology to suppress dissent. Egypt is implementing a Social Security Media Network that allows full analysis of all social media sites at any time, a minimum of 30 analysts will monitor streams of data in both classical and colloquial arabic according to a proposal he did to the egyptian media. Request leaked media. Egyptian the question now is this, it is a big one, who will prevail in a competition that has each side deploying technology as tool and weapon . Will it be ordinary citizen and activists to circumvent and undermine and outwit autocratic governments . Or the governments that has us at the capacity to monitor communications as never before . In their outstanding book, the new digital age, the authors lean towards optimism. Authoritarian governments will find their newly connected populations more difficult to control, repressed, and influence, while democratic states will be forced to include many more voices, individuals, organizations, and companies in their affairs. And yet, they noted how often authoritarian governments will have proper weapons of their own derived from their position as gatekeeper in a world of connectivity. States have an enormous amount of power over the mechanics of the internet in their own countries because states have power over the physical infrastructure connectivity required, the transmission towers, the routers, the switches, controlling the entry, exit, and waypoints for data. They can limit content, control what hardware people are allowed to use, and even create separate internets. Regimes may compromise devices before they are ever sold, and individuals who use Encryption Software to avoid censorship or surveillance will become objects of suspicion. Authoritarian governments can apply enormous pressure. They noted that states will be able to set up random checkpoints or rates to search peoples devices for the the encryption and proxy software, fines, jail time, or spots on a government database of offenders. Everyone who has downloaded a circumvention measure will find life more difficult. They raised the prospect that countries will create their own Domain Name System. No government has yet achieved an alternative system, but if a government succeeded in doing so, it would effect only unplug its population from the Global Internet and instead offer only a Close National intranet. China, which by the way jails more journalists than any other country, already blocks and filters information in sites with gusto. Turkey has blocked thousands of sites, and its Prime Minister once ordered twitter shut down. Youtube has been blocked in pakistan, and the government there has demanded many hundreds of times that facebook remove content. At google ideas, a company unit that exists to support Free Expression, government attempts to suppress the internet falls into three categories. One, server side censorship, consisting of distributive denial of service attacks to knock inconvenient voices offline. Number two, censorship on the wire, primarily consisting of national firewalls that block access to undesirable form content. This can also include states leveraging their control of Domain Name System servers and Internet Service providers that tried to hide content. Relatively few countries are doing this right now. Third, client side censorship. This increasingly includes fishing and Malware Attacks to monitor independent journalists and activists. This is becoming a very popular technique for national governments. At the core of the battle over the internet is a philosophical and legal dispute over who has dominion over the internet, and those who should govern it and how. Earlier this year, a visiting law professor at ucla laid out the issue in the georgetown law journal. Two competing visions of cyberspace have emerged in far, she wrote, russia and china advocate a sovereignty based model of cyber governments that prioritizes statecontrolled, while the United States, united kingdom, and their allies argue that cyberspace should be governed by states alone. In the early days of the internet, its creators should not be governed by states alone, i should say. In the early days of the internet, its creators, advocates, and users argued with no small measure of bravado that the internet had superseded governments and governments had no role. In 1996, the cofounder of the Electronic Freedom Foundation issued a socalled declaration of the independence of cyberspace. Governments of the industrial world, he proclaims, you weary giants of flesh and steel, i come from cyberspace, the new home of mind, and on behalf of the future, i ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us for you have no sovereignty where we gather. The vision collided with some inconvenient physical facts. This was noted by some legal academics, including in their book who controls the internet, the illusions of a borderless world. They took on the notion of the internet as a place all its own. The internet after all relies on some fairly mundane things. Underneath it all, they wrote, is an ugly physical transport infrastructure, copper wires, fiberoptic cables, and specialized routers and switches that direct information from place to place. The fact is governments to regulate the internet, and we are now faced with the question of how far they will go in asserting control. Should they remain outside national boundaries, a high seas outerspace antarctica . Should the internet be regarded as one subject to internationally agreedupon norms . Or should it be viewed like every nations own airspace . That would put the internet under each nations individual total control. In the absence, some questions countries are not waiting for one. Russia and china are leaders in treating the internet more as an intranet, and internal system that is theirs to rule. An internal system that is theirs to rule. That has become freedom expression in those countries. If there was a spark of freedom, and there was that, it is now being snuffed out. Today, most russians get their information from statecontrolled broadcasters disseminating propaganda, conspiracy, jingoism in ways big and small. One example, after the shoot down of the malaysian airliner in ukraine, intelligence pointed to rebel troops as the source of the missile that took the lives of 298 people. In russia, alternative expeditions proliferated, each one more farfetched than the next. Russian media claimed that ukrainians shut down the plane, claimed the cia provided help, asserted that the plane might have been mistaken for Vladimir Putins, making it a target. They claimed bodies on the ground were planted there. At the time, the editor in chief of russia 24 said this, our mission is to support the interests of the state. Official opinions are determinatives for our programs and our channel. While state control and manipulation of television and newspapers is one thing, but the internet and russia had long been uncensored. That is no longer the case. Early last year, russian authorities were given the power to block websites without any official explanation. Almost immediately, four russian opposition websites were blocked. Speech was constrained further. New rules required anyone with a daily online audience of more than 3000 people to register with russias internet oversight agency. Names and Contact Details were to be provided, and bloggers would be held liable for anything deemed misinformation. That included comments from members of the public. Late last year, a new russian law required that russian users and their data be stored on servers within the country. That way russia would have easy access to information about the use of facebook, twitter, google, and other services. The russian government already had an arsenal of laws that it could use against those speaking freely. The new rules created additional risks, bloggers were more likely to muzzle themselves for fear of fines and prosecution. Many of the rules are considered vague and confusing, but ambiguity is often a weapon in the hands of government, and that is the case in russia today. As one man wrote in the new yorker, Vladimir Putin has been masterful at creating an atmosphere in which there are no clear rules so the intellectuals and artists stifle themselves in order to not run afoul of vague laws and more vague social pressure. I have only talked about official suppression of free speech and a free press, but the threats are broader, more menacing than that. Nonstate actors can be an even greater danger. Two images last year cannot be forgotten, those of james foley and steven sotloff, independent journalists executed by isis. The islamic state. Their fate was made terrifyingly clear, the risks that journalists face in telling the world what they see. This year, islamic terrorist slaughtered staffers at a paris satirical weekly in reaction to caricatures of mohammed. Then there is what happens behind walls, unseen, deliberately hidden from public view, and i think now of the Washington Post correspondent in tehran held in the worst prison, suffering physically and emotionally for more than a year. He has been targeted with phony charges of espionage and other supposed offenses for which there has been no evidence. He has had to endure the sham trial, where evidence and fairness and the basic principles of due process clearly do not matter. These are just the publicized incidents, the committee to protect journalists notes that while most coverage of attacks against the press is focused on wellconnected journalists, nine of 10 killed are local reporters covering local stories. In the past three years, violence against journalists has soared to record levels. An average of more than one journalist is killed every week. In places like mexico, reporting on drug cartels, crime syndicates, and corruption is a deadly business. Just the week of june 28 this year, three journalists were killed there. Rarely are killers found and prosecuted, and much of the world, rarely are they actively pursued. All of this imposes an obligation on journalists for News Organizations in the United States. Where, despite our own concerns, we enjoy freedoms unimagined in the rest of the world. We are able to write what our professional colleagues in other countries can not. Their lives and those of their families would be at risk. A longtime china correspondent for the new yorker put it well recently. In concluding, i will quote him. As correspondents who enjoy the freedom to write what we know, we have a responsibility to do it for the reporters who do not enjoy the same privileges. Thank you very much. [applause] tom thank you very much, marty. That was wonderful. The next speaker is also a distinguished journalist. She was born in denmark, grew up in cincinnati, Northwestern School of journalism, and then went on to a long career as a journalist. She has been a reporter and a correspondent for the Washington Post, was in new delhi, tokyo, joined the New York Times in 1995, and she has had many different assignments there covering the white house during the time after 9 11, also covering the pentagon. She became the washington editor of the New York Times in february of this year, where she organizes and directs coverage from maybe 30 or so reporters in the Washington Bureau of the times. While doing all of this, she has also managed to write some books. In india, for example, she wrote a bestselling story about women having sons the title escapes me now. In tokyo, she managed to write a book about family life in japan while being the mother of a four year old and an infant, and that was real juggling on her part. Her book about condoleezza rice, the biography, is available in the rear up here, and elizabeth will be available to sign copies during the break. So please join me in welcoming her. [applause] elisabeth thank you, tom. The title is may you be the mother of 100 sons. It is an ironic title because of the expectations placed on women in india. Thank you. It is wonderful to be here. It is a beautiful place to spend a day or two. It is great to share the stage with marty. We first met at the miami herald. We crossed paths at the New York Times. You can see how small the sorority and fraternity of journalists is in this country. We all know each other. Anyway, thank you. A little more than 30 years ago, can i read this without my glasses, i think i can [laughter] i was a reporter for the Washington Post and my husband had just finished five years as a white house correspondent. I was 28 years old and have been no farther from the United States than europe. I still remember stepping out of the plane and being assaulted by the dense fog and overpowering smoky sweet smell of burning fires. At our house, i wrote my stories for the Washington Post on a manual typewriter not even a selectric or the computer i was used to because of all the power failures. I took my copy to the local Reuters Office where it was sent back to washington. There was no internet, not even cnn. To find out what was going on, we would read the local newspapers and listen to the bbc world service. There was one television station in india which ran documentaries on fertilizer plants, and i can assure you it was completely unwatchable. [laughter] the New York Times arrived by mail 10 days late. India in those days was not the economic powerhouse it is now. To a lot of people in the United States, india was an afterthought. Yet, there were a lot of americans as newspaper correspondents covering it. The times and the Washington Post and wall street journal and Los Angeles Times and Baltimore Sun, and the philadelphia inquirer, and Time Magazine were there. We wrote about the new Prime Minister, politics, culture, poverty, economics. Today, the situation is quite different. India has emerged as a major player as a rival to china and a bigger story than it ever was. The larger picture, if you look at traditional newspapers and Foreign Policy coverage, is worse. In 2003, the american journalism review reported that 10 newspapers and one chain employed 307 fulltime correspondents. They didthe last time the survey, that number had fallen to 234 fulltime correspondents. 1998,so found that since 20 newspapers had shut their bureaus oversees entirely. International News Coverage is now concentrated in the hands of big papers, the times, the wall street journal, but the vast timesof the internet, the has many viewers a month. That overseas coverage is seen by far more people than we ever imagined back in 1980. The Associated Press has grown to over 3000 employees working in over 100 countries. Many of them are local hires. Bloomberg news which did not exist when i was an idiot, has a local staff of more than 2300. National public radio has also really grown and it has 17 overseas bureaus. The New York Times has more overseas bureaus, 30, then when i was in india. And about 80 fulltime correspondents covering the world. On top of that, there have been new entries to the scene like local post, where james foley worked. In 2012, the global post won a peabody award for its videos on india, mexicos drug wars, an epidemic of kidnapping in shanghai. Hottest news the program on the scene, vice. It interviewed president obama when he visited the prison in oklahoma. Highly praised for their reporting in ukraine. Reporting for their on isis. Buzz feed and the Huffington Post have also begun to do for an coverage. Of theind, the reports death of four news in this country are exaggerated. It comes in a different form. It is not as much in the daily newspaper. It is available in depth and richness and endless quality if you know where to look for it which is on the internet. These news at organizations that do cover the world. Specifically, how they cover americas subjection to power of power around the world. Expect that you all did the reading because you would be like College Students anywhere. But, it is ok if you do not. I will talk about it. First, looking at chapter two. Obamas secret wars. Chapter two is called again\ afghanistan. 30,000 additional troops to be sent to afghanistan. March, aready sent in first batch of 17,000 troops to afghanistan. Shortly after he took office. He was loath to escalate the war but felt pressure from his military commanders. The white house has come to the realization that the war was being lost. The title of davis chapter says it all which is how obamas afghan policy came to be known inside the government as afghan goodenough. The administration would do what it had to and no more. , theal Stanley Mcchrystal top american commander in afghanistan, had wanted many more troops. As many as 80,000. Projection of American Power here especially e obama said the idea was that the afghans would be better trained by the United States in the meantime and they would have to learn how to defend their country on their own. I had my own small part in the search and saw firsthand that in 2010, the potential and great limits the American Power in the world. In the spring and fall of 2010 when i was still a pentagon reporter, i embedded with a group of marines in southern afghanistan. Women were not allowed in combat in the marines, but an experiment that year skirted the regulations. Groupsines sent a small of women come no more than two or three at a time out with all mail infantry for patrol into remote and dangerous occupied areas. Back then, the United States was still engaged in what was called a counterinsurgency strategy, trying to win over the local population by protecting them, building schools and clinics and growth, meeting with village elders. The thought was that if you at some women on the ground, female marines, they could engage with which wasen offlimits to american men. In may, i wass there with the marines. As we sat over endless cups of tea, and also ran a lot of dangerous book for trust, and talked about what the marines could do for various villages. A school, and health care center, a job. It was the ultimate projection of americas soft power and it was wellmeaning. I am certain that some afghan women ended up with some very good feelings about marines. But it was a drop in the bucket. Bringing the population to the United States was going to take a long time. Decades that obama did not have. Ask you to look at another chapter in the book about condoleezza rice. She is what she said after exercised in the morning, in on,ary 2006, news going said in the wake of hamas victories, the palestinian resigned. This was not what they expected. She decided it was run. Does she called the state department. She recalled what happened next. She said i asked the state department what happened in the palestinian elections. They said that hamas won. I thought oh my goodness. With that, she got back on her elliptical trainer and i thought i might as well finish exercising because it is going to be a really long day. That was a correct project , forred in the elections the governing party to consolidate power. As a symbol of the new stirrings they had not expected the wrong party to win. Talked again she about that election and how it reflected a certain limitation of American Power. I think that there are plenty of , but not every problem is amenable to a u. S. Solution. That is one of the first things that you have to realize. That everything that goes wrong is americas fault. Some of theme to New York Timess stories i include in the bibliography. In a story about saudi arabias air against rebels in yemen, airstrikes that were killing hundreds of civilians. It shows the limitations of american strategy. The Obama Administration has chosen to work with and help allies in west africa to the middle east rather than putting large numbers of american troops on the ground in crises. Most americans would say that is a very good idea but when one of your allies, in this case saudi arabia, uses airstrikes as a cudgel, you do not have a lot of control over them. Atthe same way, looking coopers story from march about american strategy in iraq increasingly relies on iran. The lead in the story says it all. When president obama is under political pressure from Congressional Republicans over negotiations to reign in our runs nuclear efforts, a paradox a merged. Mr. Obama is becoming dependent on iranian fighters as he tries to contain isis in iraq and syria without committing u. S. Ground troops. The only way in which the Obama Administration can credibly is bywith it strategy implicitly assuming that the iranians would carry most of the weight in winning battles on the ground. Examples, about whether American Power is in decline or ascendant. I cite these examples not as evidence of an american retreat, that as an example for the purposes of journalism. The people have often asked me when i talk about political reporting if i think the press is biased. I replied that the press is biased, towards conflict in trouble. We focus on what is wrong, what needs fixing. That is our responsibility, our job, to expose problems. This year alone, you read in the New York Times, about the exploitation of the workers in new york, the lack of oversight, the shocking lawlessness on the high seas. I think our foreignpolicy coverage and overseas coverage is much the same. To be sure, we do pursue the big successes. We ran multiple stories when the iranian deal with announced in vienna. Since then, we focused on the resistance that the deal is meeting in congress and how obama is deciding how to win democrats. , everyrt hagan says failure of the United States to get its way in the world tends to reinforce the impressions of a nation in decline. Arabs and israelis refuse to make peace. Isis is on the rise. China hacks into the office of Personnel Management and exposes millions of personnel records of federal workers. Look at the numbers. The u. S. Is still the richest economy in the world and has unmatched military strength. I know this from covering the pentagon could this years pentagon budget is 600 billion. More than that of all of the great powers combined. Chinese economy is on the rise and could overtake the u. S. Economy in the next two decades. We now have less power in the world has been around for decades. Look at the sphere of the united versus the writing soviet union in the 1950s. The iranian hostage crisis are the late 1980s, the incredible economic boom in japan which was going to take over the war at the expense of the United States. Remember . I lived in tokyo at the time and i was there when president bush came over with three American Automakers to convince the japanese to buy american cars. Instead, he ended up getting sick in the lap of the japanese Prime Minister. A terrible metaphor. At the japanese made fun of our cars and told me that the americans were lazy. We did not work as hard as the japanese according to them. Every correspondent in tokyo had days and days of stories out of that disastrous trip. In conclusion, i think the media including the proliferation of the media has done a good job of covering the day today crises in complex that reflect the state of americas power overseas. Often it is dangerous, aweinspiring work. Looking atd work ins and dexters iraq. Chris shivers, john burns. All facingspondence astonishing dangerous. I think we do a less good job at the deeper stories that show thatterm, systemic change indirectly reflects American Values and influence. , in fact, do those stories. Look at how much coverage there has been in the improvement of women in iraq in the last 25 pulitzerr look at the prizewinning coverage of ebola in africa and the Obama Administrations response to it. Some of those stories were parten by cooper who was of the pulitzer team this year. She went back to her native liberia and it astonishing stories. She is now the pentagon correspondent for the times. I hope you have read some of them. She did very brave, courageous work in liberia. She also had the stress of going and to her own country having to see it through american eyes. Kosovo our coverage of in the late 1990s. I was there as well. Kosovo qualifies as an american success story. Looking at the bigger picture. You can say that the rise of the asian economy in the last 25 years means that america has a smaller relative peace of this economic pie. Today, the u. S. Economy is 19 of the World Economy compared to 25 25 years ago. Of the rise of the asian economy and latin america, means that millions of people have been lifted out of poverty. It is not enough, but that is a lot of people. I do not see how that does not benefit the United States. And yet, it is a stories do not read about quite so often, because it is harder to get a handle on and cover than the war that you might be right in the middle of. To conclude, it is important to step back and go beyond our imperative, the first chaotic draft of history. And put the conflict and revolution in context in a way that reflects as much as it is possible in realtime, which is what we work in, americas larger place in the world. Thank you. [applause] thank you, elizabeth. That was wonderful. We will take an early break now. Do not forget to submit your questions and when you return, we going to sit on these tears chairs, and start the process. What happened to their . What happened there . Looks like russian hacking. Enjoy your break. Do not forget elizabeth about condoleezza rice. It is in the atrium for sale and signing. Thank you. Ok, i think we are ready to start. What i propose to do is to ask each of the speakers a question. We had so many questions here it will take us until 3 00 to get finished. But i will ask each one of them there may bed then some questions that both of them can respond to. The first one to elizabeth. You have covered the white house. Is it true the Obama Administration is the most secretive administration in recent history . And the most manipulative of the press . [laughter] elizabeth i can tell you that our previous editor said that it was the most secretive in history. She is no longer with us. They got rid of her. Elizabeth i do think there are special challenges in covering there is a problem with the sound. Ok, todd. Over to you. What she said was that yes, and she quoted jill abramson, the former executive editor as saying that about the Obama Administration. Elizabeth is this any better . That the Obama Administration resents a lot of challenges. At isy, if you look this better . At the nsa, it llance that was if you look at the drone program. Administration increased the number of drones drones and pakistan [indiscernible] recently wrote a story about they made the decision to name the Senior Officers who were running the cia drone program. Was a great deal of controversy and criticism at the time about that. They felt very shortly that since the Pentagon Program is public, and the officers who run it are public, and since this was a huge part of American Power in Foreign Policy, that the officers should be named. The cia was very angry. The point is that there is a great deal of secrecy in this administration. It is a challenge to cover. In terms of the white house, we have four white house correspondents, peter baker is the chief. They will tell you how difficult. T is the problem i had with the Bush Administration also. I will outline the secrecy for you in one way. The other problem is getting access to their thinking. And the debate inside the white house about policy decisions. That is really hard to get at in real time. Of getting inem to see someone and then you get talking points. Conversationreal about why they were debating certain points. They do not want you to to write it as conflict. Access to their thinking is really important and that is what is hard to get. It is getting easier now in the last 18 months. Like any administration, they are loosening up because they see the end in sight. The president himself has been much more open about his thinking. I guess that is a long way of answering to say yes, there are serious challenges in covering any white house, and certainly this one. Marty do you have any observations . Marty i think elizabeth covered it. Heres a question for you, marty. Manyave been an editor of important newspapers. Can you give us some insight into what it is like to be an editor under jeff these oh, the head of amazon, the new owner of the Washington Post . Marty sure. Over 1. 5s bought us years ago. It is an unusual purchase for a News Organization like ours. It was wholly unexpected. No one knew he had any interest in our field. Familyexpected that the would sell the Washington Post which it had owned for such a long. Of time. And a revered family like that. It has actually been a good experience. Brings to the post some things that we need. He brings questions about the way we do things, and a different way of thinking about it. Certainly, some hard questions about how we approach our work, he also brings ideas on new things we can do. And an openness to our ideas but he also brings his own ideas. We need fresh ideas in our field. We need some people outside from outside the industry that understand technology and the way that information is dedicated and shared. Thirdly, he brings capital. He is one of the wealthiest people in the world. He has been willing to invest. That has been great because we are in a. Where we have to make a a transition from a print era to a digital era. We need to fund experiments and he has been willing to fund all sorts of experiments with us so that we can try and see if they work. He is also providing a runway through this. Where we can try things before we take off. Were not supposed to land. Only take off on this runway. No landing allowed. And so, it has been a very good experience. We have grown rapidly. We are growing more rapidly than anyone among our peer sets. From that standpoint, it has been terrific. Can you give a specific example of an experiment that has worked in one that has failed . Marty we dont talk about failures. Especially since this is being televised and there are hundreds of people here. I will talk about successes. We have had a couple. A number of them actually. We have an overnight crew that produces a show called morning mix. They work from 10 p. M. Until 6 00 a. M. All over the world, all over the internet for stories that can be done. They develop those stories in their own distinct way. And those stories are listed by 5 00 a. M. In the morning or earlier. They get a lot of fresh content for us in the morning. Written in a way that is particularly suited for the web which is different from the way you would write for a newspaper. That has been quite successful. Called started something posteverything which is our answer to the huntington post. We invite outside answers writers to write for us. A lot of ordinary individuals writing about their personal experiences. Personal experiences. Pieces. E popular they have done extremely well. Probably our most popular one was the headline was, what happened when i drove my mercedes down to pick up my food stamps . [laughter] piece. Very, very popular it was widely shared. This is a question for both of you. How do you explain the success of fox news, and related to that feeling aboutur the future of print journalism . Liz gets all the good questions. Elisabeth you can answer, too. I think fox attracts people who believe in the fox news point of view. Its not a surprise. Know, its lively. Its engaging. It has a very strong point of view, and i think it confirms a lot of peoples political beliefs to watch it. It is not a surprise. Cnn is doing something very different, which is being a straight News Organization. What was the rest of the question . The future of print journalism. Yes. A aboutw i can tell you the times in print journalism. I cannot predict how many more years or if this is ever going to go away, but right now the prince edition of the new york the print edition of the New York Times, the daily circulation is Something Like 700,000. Our digital lonely subscribers is close to a million now. You can see what is happening area that is what is happening. That is the pay wall. People are paying for those digital only subscriptions. For now, most of the revenue comes from advertising. There is an increase in from print advertising. There is an increase in digital advertising. We are so committed to the newspaper. A huge amount of focus is on the web, especially on mobile and phones. The readership is really, really going. I think as the senior editors at the times like to say, we dont care how you get your news, how you get your New York Times every morning. We just want you to get it. This n talk about there is a huge push in the newsroom to get our stories out in front of people. All sorts of Audience Growth editors who push out our stories. Getting the stories out in front of the right people. I think theres a lot of energy. Theres a lot of optimism in the newsroom. Print, i dont know. What do you think . Tom marty . The future of journalism, broadly, i think is good. There are things we can do now with storytelling we could not do before. We are reaching more people. Allre reaching more people over the world. They can reach information instantaneously like we could not before. You name it. There are a lot of things we can do. It will be challenging. Challenging. Cally there is no question. As far as print is concerned i have said this publicly in speeches we have to move beyond the idea that print will be a big part of what we do for a very long time. I do not know what the end date will be. I do not think it will be a big part of what News Organizations like ours do for a lot longer. It is a Digital World we live in, whether you like it or not. Its actually more than a Digital World. Its a mobile world. At themount of traffic traffic, ises, our coming from mobile devices. And its not coming directly to us, but from facebook and social media platforms, but primarily facebook. You have a younger audience, millennial audience that is reading the news on facebook, getting the facebook feed, and linking out to a story that might come from the post, the New York Times, another News Organization as well. Its a very different way of getting your news. That is an and citation the news should find us. And what they are interested in will somehow magically appear in front of them. Share itfriends will with him. But there is not an expectation they go to a destination and there they find the information of interest to them. Tom thanks. I wonder if i can follow up with a question about the economics of it. Where is the revenue stream for that kind of journalism . If facebook is the prime window, where does the Washington Post get revenue from that Business Model . Marty right. We are still trying to provide the answer to that. We obviously get digital revenue and their resources of digital revenue just as there were two primary sources of print revenue, and that is advertising and subscription. That is the same model we had before, of enough. With the advertising model is the rates are lower than they were before. We used to think we were in a competitive news town, but now we are competing with everybody. We compete with cnn, fox, both feed buzzfeed. Withdvertising, we compete facebook, google. We compete with twitter. We compete with these behemoths that are much larger than we are, these large organizations, so the amount of inventory online could be infinite. The more you have, the lower the advertising rate, typically. Its a hugely challenging environment. We are all struggling with what is a sustainable economic model . Beenhe times, it has digital subscriptions. They have been better at it than anybody else. A millions instructions and thats great. On the other hand, it has pretty , i think, andut that is a challenge for them. How do you generate growth if your subscriptions have plateaued . As a result of that, there is a push for foreign subscriptions. Theres a big push to see how many English Speakers we can get overseas and just grow the international audience. Theres also a chinese language mission. Experimentst of going on with translated versions. There are know a lot of English Speakers of over the world, and the times likes to think of them as potential readers and subscribers. Elisabeth, this is a question about the times coverage of hillary clinton. Margaret sullivan took the times of the for its coverage alleged criminal action by hillary and the use of emails. She said that the post the blog she posted on about this got more attention than anything she has ever written. Do you have any views on the way the times has covered clinton on the issue of the emails . The post ran Hillary Clintons story this morning on emails, so you might want to ask marty. [laughter] tom come on, marty. Elisabeth im not going to go beyond what our executive editor marty i have turned off my smartphone. Elisabeth i am not going to go beyond what my executive editor said in a long column about this. Just that this is a difficult question for me to answer with this large crowd. , just want to say, you know the sourcing on that story is deemed good. Sources acrossel multiple layers of government, and they told us the wrong thing. Were still telling us the wrong thing the next morning. So, you can say, we should have held these great. We should have held the story. Well, the toll is the one thing the next morning. The wrong thing the next morning. We did break this story. And the Clinton Administration i mean, the Clinton Campaign has pushed back very strongly. I think that is all i want to say about it. I think marty can talk about theres rate this morning there story this morning which broke some ground. Also, sometimes people do for you Margaret Sullivan is a public editor. She is not an editor at the New York Times. Although she is in the newsroom, shes an outside person hired to pass judgment on what the editors and reporters at the New York Times do. Its not internal criticism. Shes an outside source. People sometimes get that confused, and understandably. If she criticizes a reporter the reporter was criticized by the New York Times senior editors. This is not the case with Margaret Sullivan. She is an outside person hired to critique the times every day basically. Tom marty, a question for you regarding the journalist ellen iran. Should the United States pay a ransom to free capture journalists . And should that issue have been much more of an explicit condition for the recently negotiated Iran Nuclear Treaty . Well, you know the administration has not been pay ransom. Thats not really relevant to this situation. That issue has come up with respect to other hostages, whether they happen to be journalists are other people, and whether the families themselves should pay a ransom and whether the United States should prohibit the paying of ransom, as it has done in the past. That policy has been loosened now. Im not going to take a position on that. I am responsible for the news and features coverage of the post, so my job is to make sure that we approach things and objective way. I do not take a position on all of the issues in front of people, including what shouldve been the terms of the nuclear deal the admin is ration arrived the administration arrived at. Should be that jason released immediately, that he did absolutely nothing wrong. Whether it is part of the nuclear deal or not, the reality engage in not espionage, there is no evidence he engaged in espionage, there is no evidence he committed any other offense, and theres absolutely no reason for him to have been arrested in the first place and there is no reason for him to have been in the worst prison in iran now for a year. That is independent of the nuclear agreement. Tom ok, turning to this country, what, if any, threats fate ofwo see to the journalism and reporting in the United States . You know,elisabeth the freedom of journalism reporting well, financial. Financial difficulties have hit a lot of mediumsized newspapers really hard and they have cut way back on staff. They have cut back on local coverage, state house reporting. All of those stories you used to see about corruption it houses , thereslegislators less of that. I do not see any kind of repression maybe marty can come up with something but in washington its the usual problem of background stores is sources. It is hard to name sources, with National Security reporting in particular. I do not see any repression in this country. You have the white house, the Obama Administration will strenuously object to some stories, but no one orders us to stop publishing. I think the concern in washington is primarily round responses to freedom requests,tion act nonresponses to freedom of information act request. Documents when finally released are heavily redacted. That he waited years for. Those kinds of things. Haveeak investigations taken place which the New York Times has been central to that. Jim faced prison for not revealing his source. The number of people in government who sort of feel they. Hould not speak to the press they feel that they would become objects of suspicion because there is evidence that they communicated with a journalist. Why give a background briefing if you are not disclosing classified information if at some point you think that reporter might get access to classified information and you would become an object of the russian and subject to estigation, have to hire an object of suspicion and investigation and have to hire a lawyer. In washington, that is a serious concern. There are people who simply do not respond. They send you back an email, a copy of the press operation and say, dont email me. Dont contact me ever again. Here is the press contact. And thats the end of it. At other levels, you know, i think the issue of a records statet is serious at the and local level as well. I think you are seeing a certain resistance a strong resistance on the part of state and local governments to do what they are required to under law. I think the greatest threat to the press in the night as states comes from the press itself, and that is sometimes just a lakh of kurt in the United States comes from the press itself, and that is sometimes just a lack of courage. Just what the impact might be on the financial circumstances of their organization where they are financially challenged. That is something that we ourselves have to deal with and we have to overcome any concerns with that and show the courage to publish what the facts are. Tom this is a question about indepth coverage. Can indepth coverage be provided best buy a daily oh weekly sus the provided best by a daily newspaper versus a weekly one like the economist . No. Y elisabeth seal team six, the lawlessness, the shocking events on the high 8000, 9000, 10 thousand words. People read them on their smartphones, believe it or not. I think there is a real place ar that kind of coverage and daily newspaper, daily Media Organization like the New York Times, because those stories run. Its much more available when you look on the web. I do not think we would at all nevert, and the times has. We are completely committed to what we call longform journalism, multipart series. A huge amount of commitment,. Uge amount of resources reporters and editors in travel and graphic designers. No. We are to that kind of journalism. Very we, too, are committed to that. I think you can find that kind of indepth reporting and all of the major News Organizations today. We spent in a norm is amount of resources under and in norm rmous amount of resources understanding the refugee crisis. We have looked indepth at isis. We have had a major series looking at why the internet is so vulnerable, how it became that way. Rmous expenditure of resources, looking back at the creation of the internet and if they thought about security. The answer is the only kind of security they thought about was a nuclear bomb. Embarked on a major series, as i mentioned, about the threats around the world. We have many others as well, but we do it all the time. Tom does the Citizens United ruling support or impede freedom of expression for most americans . Who wants to take a crack at that . Elisabeth one of the issues with these questions i think i will speak for marty. We do not want to take a with the stories we ran over the weekend, the last couple days about the amount of money that has poured into these campaigns from a very small number of extremely rich people, fredis not exactly what had in mind many years ago with campaignfinance reform. We are covering it closely. You look at you guys can tell us what you think about a handful of extremely rich individuals financing, being the main financers of many of these campaigns, particularly the republican campaigns. Ted cruz has how many . Just a handful of people. You can seee partly what it has done, it has created a field of 17 republican candidates. If you get a lot of money from a handful of people, youre on that stage tomorrow night. So, thats my answer. Beth. i agree with elisa i do not want to express a point of view and i Supreme Court decision. Ordinary people can come to a conclusion on their own without my counsel. That, whatlated to is your view on the donald trump phenomenon . [laughter] tom frank bruni in the new sunday suggested the media is largely to blame , what hephenomena called the perversion of politics by vacuous stagecraft. [laughter] he is a columnist because he has opinions. I cant imagine not covering donald trump right now. He is ahead in the polls. But i will tell you what you have heard everywhere. Is certainlyump reaching into a very disaffected, angry group of americans who are tired of washington, tired of talking points from politicians. That infind it amazing his income disclosures, he said he was richer than perhaps he is. Politics,heard of and i and politics. He is breaking all the rules. Look, its still really early. He has not been tested. Severely and a serious policy debate. We shall see. Right now, it is the summer before the campaign, the real summer of the campaign. To a, he does appeal certain part of the united the poll showed this morning a wide range of people. Of got to look at that more closely. Anyway, i think he made the Clinton Campaign very happy. I think you made the Jeb Bush Campaign very happy. Any view, marty . Elisabeth i have not marty i have not read his column. I have been tempted to start a hashtag on twitter, blamethemedia. Obviously if we win away, everything would be fine. It gets a little silly. Is concerned,p the only lesson we should draw from this is we have to be very skeptical of political pundits early on, including people who specialize now these Data Specialists who are looking at the campaigns and saying who is a serious candidate and who is not. Maintained, look, we dont decide who the candidates are. We should not reject to predict who is going to be a serious candidate. We should take them all seriously. And the voters get to decide. I think there is clear evidence that the pundits do not always know what they are talking about. Goingant predict two is to be the serious candidate. No one would predict in fact, no one did predict, as far as i know, we have not unearthed someone who predicted donald trump would be the leader at this stage, and look what happened. Ok, just what your comment, cany although elisabeth talk about this as well how will freedoms of expression outside the how can restrictions on freedoms of its fresh and outside the United States impact american freedom, if at all . Elisabeth obviously, the problems that the times is facing in china are quite real. With getting correspondence into beijing because of the coverage. That is the big problem. Lockingese are not only the correspondence out. There is the policy of attrition against to be correspondence in china. That is a problem. Do you want me to go on . You go ahead. [laughter] marty this was not part of it. The blocking of access to information the United States has generally level ofd the information will accrue to its benefit. He will see how people are living. They will see how society is functioning. Accurate information will make its way into the information ecosystem. And to the extent countries can control their internets or block access, then that. Begins to fall apart. And these countries have even greater control over what thatens see, and i think should probably make it more difficult for the United States to exercise its will in the world. People think that is a good thing for us to do. I have tos imagine that would be the case. And for americans, it has become an extremely difficult to do their job in these countries. They can be arrested. They can be harassed. They can be prohibited, as the New York Times has not been able to receive visas for its journalist to go into china. They have been denied visas because the Chinese Government is upset about very good reporting about corruption there. And that is true in other countries as well. Thereof been several questions about the fine line between reporting the news there have been several questions about the fine line between reporting the news and shaping the news. When it comes to questions about American Power abroad, fox news and msnbc tell different stories. They seem to be trying to shape peoples perceptions. Is this right . Well, yeah. Its not whether it is right or wrong. It is what they see as their audience. Msnbc on the left and fox on the right. You can just see it on msnbc you can see it with rachel maddow, especially in the evening, all of the host to have a very liberal bents. Hosts who have a very liberal bents. Msnbc has always felt that it works for them, especially during political campaigns. I cant speak for them. At it certainly works as you go into the political campaign, and again, to watch programs that reinforce your beliefs, make you feel good. Right in the middle and sometimes it struggles with an obvious, although it is doing much better now because it presents itself as straight on reporting. That is the calculation. The senior people at both of those that is the calculation the senior people of both of those networks have made about the segments of their audience. Whether it is right or wrong, it works for them. Tom marty . Have i do not think they thought about whether it is right or wrong. I think they have thought about whether it is their Business Model. It is the case that many people, if not most people are drawn to News Organizations that affirm their existing points of view. They feel comfortable with it. They feel their views are validated. And they believe that others are just wrong. Its not our Business Model, for the two of us appear or the organizations we represent. Thats not who we want to be, and we think people come to us for different reasons. Tom related to that is a question about journalists, prominent journalists invited to go on to talk shows. On one hand, that helps the brand of the the washington and the New York Times, but on the other, you have opinions being formed. Do you have around rules that you tell your do you have ground rules that you tell your reporters, going into the situations with george will and all of these opinions. How do you tread that line between reporting and opinion when your byline appears in these newspapers . Elisabeth i used to go on television a lot when i was covering the white house. Now that in inside the office all day, quite a bit less so. Do notes are, you express opinions and you do not predict. You do not say soandso is going to win or whatever. We are also kind of boring. Like today. I mean, marty and i have both said things that were taken out of you know, were just taken and people ran with them. So, you are very careful. It is an issue. You are on the shows because of your suppose it supposed expertise. I would say this is what my reporting has told me, and yes on the one hand, democrats say this, but of course, republicans say that. I try to be measured. Its an issue when youre on those shows and you have people like george well, opinion people, expressing strong views and you were sitting there in the middle of this fight and you do not want to take sides, but, you know it is an issue. No, im not going to do that. Its too hard. Im going to tell them no. We have a reporter go on meet and isss all the time very careful. You are never as fiery or provocative or interesting as the opinion people on the shows. Tom marty . Marty just to keep it brief, our approach is the same. Basically do not say anything on the shows you would not say in the paper or on our website. Those are the standards we use. Of course its a difficult environment in which to operate. It is like locker room conversation. So it gets tricky with the risk of getting carried away. Bit st to flip this a should the press be more biased by not giving people equal time to Climate Change deniers, it antievolutionists, etc. . To answer thatnt question. One of the people i edit, davenport, the great Environmental Writer you , our and Margaret Sullivan public editor is big into this notion of fault equivalency. To be an unbiased reporter you have to say one hand, a vast majority of scientists think that there is clearly im a change caused by humans. On the other hand, these other people say, we do not know for sure. We dont do that anymore on Climate Change. Its 99 or whatever. We basically say because of the established science, humans caused Climate Change. We dont do that. Other issues we do that is one where we have moved beyond what i would call the fault equivalency. Marty we treat Climate Change as real and serious. That is where, as she said, where the vast majority of the scientists almost unanimously view the science rests. So, we treat science seriously and respectfully. And that is how we write about it. Now recently we ran a piece from someone who had an alternative point of view, but that is their job. To be open to all points of view. Should the u. N. Be open to global agreements, and how can the United States inspire such a global agreement . Elisabeth you are going to answer that one. Marty what was that . Internet bethe governed by global agreements . Marty there is a lot of discussion, i gather, about therer as i said should be standard rules of behavior for the internet, the way that we deal with space, international laws, the high seas, things like that. Be ould probably certainly a better system than regimesuthoritarian close off the internet, have their own rules for each of these individual states. And we see what the consequences of that are. That is a brutal repression of free speech in those countries. It denies citizens of those countries access to information that is available to millions and billions of people around the world. It is certainly better than a country by country internet. 24 hour news channels. Do they do more harm than good . Too polarizing . You talkedwell, about msnbc and fox. I think they are repetitive. You cant watch for more than i mean, they chew over the same developments over day every day over and over again. Marty brain damage. Right. Th yeah. You could go berserk watching them for that long. I dont think they are harmful. Theyre just really hard to watch. Especially sometimes cnn in the middle of the day breaking news. They are really shifting the standards for breaking news. Developing now is really not. We keep it on in the Washington Bureau and the newsroom in new york and we keep an eye on it. You can see the absinthe flows. If you can see the ebbs and flows. If they find a plain part, its a very big deal. [laughter] oh, they found a plane part. You have to watch for a while. Ok, marty, this is for you. As expressed by the budget, please compare what was spent by the post in 2015 by decade earlier. Come on, mcnamara. Marty i have no idea. Im sure it is less. About 30 people overseas and 15 euros. Not as much as the New York Times, but substantial. A decade ago, we were covering some wars, so it was probably substantially more expensive to cover the wars in afghanistan , and it was a Huge Investment of resources of every type. So, you know, its less, but still substantial. Tom ok, this question is for both of you. And that relates to the coverage of the president ial election for 2016. Kennedyrage of the election in 1960 was revealed through teddy whites book the making of a president , a classic, and another, the boys about how the press handled that. I wonder how you view the coverage of this current cycle from your two perspectives, and what are the challenges the newspapers face when dealing with this . Elisabeth i am not responsible for the president ial campaign coverage, but i will talk about the question. You look at teddy whites book the boys in the bus first of all the boys in the bus, that changed. Inas on the Mccain Campaign 2008, and things have changed drastically even since 08. First of all, there are girls on the bus. A thousand things that are different. Back in those days, yeah, there middleaged guys covering these campaigns, and they would file one story a day at 5 00 or 6 00 at night. I think they were filing on typewriters i guess they must have dictated by phone . They dictated. There was a dictation room at the New York Times and the Washington Post. Copy iread your actually did that that was how you got your stories in. But the main difference was the resort storage a m1 deadline. Now these campaigns are brutal. The main difference was there was one story a day and one deadline. Now these campaigns are brutal. The Mccain Campaign tweeting constantly, feeding the web, feeding the first draft, which newsletter, morning but it is also received all day long as items from the campaign. Theres also 17 candidates. I look at how these reporters work now. You are filing all day long. You are tweeting, filing, posting. At the end of the day, after all of this, you have to come up with an intelligent, thoughtful New York Times story for later additions for the web and for itions of the paper. It never stops. You was getting to me on the Mccain Campaign. It is hard to find time to think, i think. In this kind of process. To step back and to write bigger stories about what it all means. I mean, reporters do it. The demands on them are way beyond what it ever was on the boys on the bus. I actually like the direction of some of the reporting. Minute toytoday, minute reporting we all do now that we did not have to do in the past. Had a way, the times dictation room. They were the last to eliminate it. I find News Organizations like have decided a lot of our resources should not be dedicated to following the candidates as they move around, but should stand back and pursue the kinds of stories that should be pursued. Theres a lot more investigative reporting. We go deep into their backgrounds. We go deep into their financial connections. We go deep into their donors in a way that we should. And we do what we call enterprise reporting. Where we are not just the daily reporting. We are actually being enterprising about it and finding deeper stories that require more time and actually break news. Not news that the candidate happened to say this or there was this malapropism on the part of this candidate or whatever it might be, but actually much deeper stories than we have had in the past, and im pleased with that on average. Coupleere were a questions about radio. Is radio still strong, vital, and global . There used to be the voice of america, which reported americas stories and values abroad. Does this exist anymore . Well, yes. Mvr is bigger than ever and has a much stronger resins overseas. Here in the United States. I am sure that many of you listen to npr. Debate in constant congress about what its mission should be. Obviously the voice of america journalists want to keep it completely separate, objective News Organization, and there is a move in congress to make it as the United States is coming under siege from all of this ice is propaganda, there is a move in congress to try and make it more reflective of American Values and american foreignpolicy issues. Obviously the journalists at voa are totally opposed to that. Reallyhink npr is a strong presence here and overseas and has continued to grow and flourish. Very largeis a organization. They have a difficult relationship with their affiliates all over the country about who should be covering what and how big npr itself should become, which some theirates feel may be at expense. They are working through that situation right now, but they are a very substantial News Organization. And i would point out they are very dependent on other News Organizations like ours. I you listen to npr, and , you a lot of you listen will hear as guests, reporters from the Washington Post, from the wall street journal. They do as they are, not have a staff as substantial as hours to do the reporting that we do. They do good work and they do a fair amount of original reporting as well. But they are highly dependent on others, and we are part of that ecosystem. Om yeah this question relates to elisab eths comments about the Baltimore Sun closing its Foreign Bureau and other newspapers doing the same. It is about the second tier newspapers, not the post and the wall street journal. Do you have views about these chicago, milwaukee him of these kinds of things . Elisabeth like all newspapers, they are struggling with their print editions and trying to make their digital editions profitable. Hit harder and they have cut back the newsrooms quite a bit. Has an advantage because of its size and reach around the country. Hometownmoving my up, wewhen i was growing had two cartons that said post, and now its just this little tiny tabloid with what looks like an advertiser. You know, they have all shrunk. Locally andd in greatnow about this detail but there have been a lot of local websites that have really sprung up, sort of hyper local coverage of the cities around the country. But i dont what paper was it . I was at a seminar this past papers, aone of the lot of the people who were there , the reporters were doing they were self editing. They had no editing staff. And i thought, oh, my god. [laughter] happening atis some of these places as they cut staff. Reporters are editing themselves. Imagineorter, i cannot that. As an editor, i cant imagine it either. Tom that goes to a question someone had about the vetting. Traditional newspapers like the post have good sub editors to check the facts. Is there any vetting on the web, the news outlets that people read these days online that you know about . Marty when you talk about the web, that is a very big space. Different people have different policies. You know, we have a stated policy of trying to read everything, have at least one other person read something before it is hosted. I am sure that the times has something similar. Rings happen at such a speed im sure it is not reviewed as closely as it was in the past. Things happen at such a speed. They do not get the same level of editing as you had in the past. A day newspaper or twice a day newspaper. Now youll are talking about things being posted 24 hours a day, including at night, all the e, evan days a week. At seven days a week. If you are not the first with the story, theres a good chance you will not get the traffic. For our editing, the question about writing for the web and posting it online we have a system. I am sure the post is the same where you have you have 223 editors look at it, edit 2 to it, edit itok at before he goes out. Then there is a copy editor who looks at it, and there might be another editor if it is a particular important story. Theres a lot of pressure to get things up quickly. Huge amounts of pressure. So, there is constant tension between we have got to get this out, but weve got to make sure it is right. You know, it can be nerveracking. The way that we did that in washington sometimes, its a really big deal story and it has to go right away, but if its very competitive, we will have to get editors read it simultaneously. You can have another editor read over his shoulder. But it is still, you know the later versions of this story is the day unfolds, developments happen, these tory can change a lot the story can change a lot. Theres a lot more scrutiny given to the story at the end of the day as it goes into print. Can i go back to the previous question about regional papers, if i might . Involvedy career was with regional papers. I was the editor of the boston globe, the miami herald. Feel very strongly they do face and normas pressures. They do face enormous pressures. I eliminated foreign coverage at the boston globe in 2007 or so when we were going through the great recession. Anyone with in a management role , you do what you have to do. You have to make tough decisions. We going to cover our local region . The answer for an institution like the boston globe was we are going to cover our local region. There are other places that will cover the world. Nobody was happy with that. I was not happy with that. Sharply criticized. Free much all of the people overseas at that moment left the boston globe to do other things. But i think those institutions there are still many good newspapers out there. Does aston globe still great job. The l. A. Times does a great job. And its critically important that they succeed. We at the boston globe launched an investigation of the Catholic Church that exposed the sex abuse scandal the church is dealing with even today. Tom you got a pulitzer for it. And if we marty had not done that, that story would not have been done. These newspapers have to be the eyes and ears. We cannot be everywhere. Regardless of our size. Even if we were double the size, we would not be able to do that. I think it is absolutely critical that they succeed. Their financial challenges are greater than ours. There is no question about it. We have the capacity to create National Products or as shetional products, was talking about before, how the New York Times is trying to get international subscribers. Newspapers, that is much were difficult and they face the same competition with google and others for advertising. They just do tremendous work under very difficult circumstances and very often write very important stories that all of us learn from. Tom well said. Thank you. Im going to ask one more before we close. We are getting to the end. Before i do, i want to ask both of you if there was something you thought was going to be asked, but wasnt . Or should have been. The final question has to do with the future. I wonder if you both can talk about the recruiting of the young journalists in the digital age. What are you looking for. How excited are young people about doing the kinds of things that you do that are so essential for american democracy . Elisabeth ive got to tell you. You know, given how tough the business is right now, we still get an amazing applicants. We had this fantastic intern this summer in the Washington Bureau he is 22 years old. He graduated from harvard. He just wants to be a journalist. He does not want to go to wall street or finance. He was to be a journalist and he is a great writer. What i find about the young people we do hire, first of all, we hire journalists. The main thing is you hire journalists. Some may have more experience than others, some may have more potential. What i find interesting, of all of the efforts we have on the web and the iphone and Audience Development and graphics and cool, and that is really and there are all of these young people running around the newsroom now pushing our stories out to everybody, and they are young and they are cap so many of them just want to be reporters and write stories. That is what gives me a lot of hope. I think, well, if you are so cool and we are this legacy media. All of these old content providers, right . They just want to be new york reporters and write stories. That is their dream. Just to do the oldfashioned going out and interviewing people and writing a story. Get a huge number of applicants. I have a lot of hope for the future. Marty i would say the single most encouraging thing in our profession today is the caliber of talent. And the single most important thing to our profession is the caliber of talent in our profession. I am amazed at the quality of people we have. The interns we have in the summer. The people we end up hiring. Some who work with us for several years. It is amazing. They have multiple degrees. They speak many different languages. They are a lot smarter than i was or a. M. That i was or am. They are good writers. And they enter the profession for all the right reasons. They are not looking for bank. They are not looking to be a celebrity. They just think we serve a useful purpose in society and in the world and they want to be part of it. And they do that knowing the profession is at a very moment. Ing they face all sorts of risks, and they do it anyway. All of us entered the profession when it was doing pretty much just fine. They had, theyms paled at the problems we face today. I have huge admiration for the people entering our profession now and am very grateful they have chosen journalism as the race for themselves. Tom bravo. Thank you very much. [applause] next, q a with kurt deion. Then, your calls and comments from washington journal. Saturday august 20 nine marks the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, one of the five deadliest dorms and u. S. History. Cspan special coverage begins live today to look ok in eastern with the atlantic magazines conference in new orleans, an allday event. At 8 00, more from the conference with the new orleansbased poets, actors, and others. Then, cspans tour of new orleans recovery efforts, and then a 2005 house hearing featuring new orleans citizens featuring their experiences. They told us that they would take us to shelters where we they loadedlp and us up on these military trucks, then they declared the city of zone. Leans a war and it still didnt sink in that we were the prisoners of war. On wednesday eight 00, cspans tour of hurricane damage and recovery at st. Bernard parish. He cant describe it that is your whole life gone. Know . , you all your friends and family, everybody is gone. A year later and still you dont see it. Hell of a feeling, can forget it. Follow that 9 00 with the 2005 town hall meeting in new orleans, moderated by the mayor. This is state level, federal level, and all other levels. You to represent me from a local level. I dont know where else to go. I dont know what else to do. Thursday night starting at 8 00, more from the atlantic conference with craig you gate and dean baquet. Then we will show you president obamas trip to the region as well as remarks on the recovery effort 10 years after katrina. The Hurricane Katrina anniversary coverage all this week on cspan. Announcer this week on q a, 20yearold College Student kurt deion. Since age nine, he has been visiting the graves of president s and Vice President s. He talks about those visits, his interest in american history, and what it was like meeting president bill and hillary clinton. Brian you have a website. What is it . Kurt kurts historic website is a website where i detail the accounts, i have the accounts of all my different trips to president ial and Vice President ial burial sites, president ial homes, libraries. Different gravesites. I have interesting facts about the different individuals whose gravesites i have been to because also, not just showing the different sites i have been to, but it is also supposed to be a learning tool. Brian how old are you . Kurt 20 years old. Brian where are you in school . Kurt presently, i am a rising senior at Bryant University in smithfield, rhode island. Brian what is your major . Kurt i am a history major, one of the few at bryant. It is a very small History Department but a very good History Department and i have actually the only history major graduating from bryant next year