Transcripts For CSPAN2 Marvin Olasky Reforming Journalism 20240713

Now the editor in chief Marvin Olasky examines the principles of journalism and offers his thoughts on reporting. Good afternoon and welcome to the Heritage Foundation, my name is rob bluey, Vice President of communications at heritage and executive editor of the daily said no. As a courtesy to the speaker spo become a habit to ask you silence your cell phone although dont turn them off, because we do encourage you to share on social media about todays program and to help us spread the word we are streaming on twitter and youtube and you can find it on the heritage beyond both of those channels and platforms. To introduce the guests today, Marvin Olasky is a prolific writer and accomplished editor. We are proud to welcome him back to the Heritage Foundation where he is a former visiting fellow in somebody that is a close friend of the organization. Hes the author of more than 25 books including his latest, reforming journalism, which he will discuss with us today. Marvins political journey is quite unique as he became an atheist marxist in high school and went on to join the communist party in the early 1970s. As well as he was at the university of michigan, working on his phd, but he had a spiritual awakening and was baptized under the Presbyterian Church in 1976. He later became the founder of reading her Presbyterian Church in austin, texas in 1992. After college, he taught journalism for more than 25 years at the university of texas at austin and became a reporter for the yale daily news and the boston globe. His first book garnered significant attention and also crossed the eye of the bradley foundation, which supported his visiting fellowship right here at the Heritage Foundation for two years. One of his most wellknown works is the tragedy of american compassion, which transformed him into a leader in the Christian Conservative political thought movement. Newt gingrich, speaker of the house, distributed to every republican member of the house at the time. Its also what inspired the phrase compassionate conservatism. He was instrumental in the success of the world of Journalism Institute in which he is now the dean of and the institute seeks to recruit and train christian journalists and inject them into the mainstream media. We certainly do need that. Hes the editorinchief of the world, a Multimedia Organization that reports from a christian worldview. You can follow him on twitter at marvinolasky. Reforming journalism has been described as a facebook journal oadvice and advocating the convictions and media that are dominated by the left. As somebody that went to Journalism School myself and spent time as a reporter here in washington, ive enjoyed reading it and i highly recommend it to you. We have copies for sale as you read the auditorium today in the lobby. Now to tell us more about reforming journalism, id like to welcome Marvin Olasky. [applause] thank you all for coming today. Its great to be back at heritage. The most Productive Research year of my life 1989, 1990. This building was the base of my trips to the library about five blocks away. It was fun, literally blowing the dust off the records and the research turned into the american compassion. People say it made a difference in the drive for welfare reform in the 1990s. I like to think that change helped several million move from welfare to productive work, so im grateful to heritage for the fight. Arthur brooks was the former head of aei on said he got Barack Obamas jaw to drop when arthur told him im a conservative because they care about helping the poor. And so im grateful to heritage for the year here with the background rob referred to. Back in the 1970s i thought i was pretty smart and have high sat scores, yale diploma, some work in bigtime journalism. I was basically a leftwing protester invited into the halls of power and i was so smart i did one of thisone of the stupis anyone could do it joined the party and through gods grace i came out of it and in retrospect it was a beneficial experience for me because it made me realize really how stupid i am and if it is important for all of us to come to mind. It helped me realize other people considered smart and stupid. I started to go to find true wisdom and i became skeptical of ex essential subjectivity and lack of humility and its typified me as well if not careful and that brings me to todays subject area youve heard of the former trump aide spoke to a conservative group in st. Louis and asked they think that its been unpleasant and nasty to date. You havent seen anything. The 2020 campaign will go down as the most vitriolic and nasty in history. Its very simple. We win, we saved the country. Well, no, you do not. We do not win, we do not save the country if we win by escalating anger on the left or the right whoever wins by the sword will eventually die by it and just a little history since this is what i studied a lot, the United States really has been exceptional. Exceptional. I know theres debate about half that of all of the revolutions of studied, the American Revolution is the only women didnt become disastrous. France, russia which i became familiar with, china, russia, cambodia they all started with ideas that quickly became idols and that could have been here. Probably not in the next decade, that it could have been. Visited argentina last month with its cycles of inflation. That could have been here and we could become like venezuela where class warfare has hurt all the classes. Journalism and vitriolic as part of ththe trail is partof the prp escalating cultural decay and the debt driven National Bankruptcy will leave more people to go from fierce words to sticks and stones. The old objectivity never was that good and it certainly doesnt work now. Are there alternatives so i would like to be able to suggestions based on the teaching that might help make it seem like part of the solution rather than part of the problem. And i do want to stress these came out of my work at world when i was at heritage 30 years ago i walked over to Union Station and met with the founder in 1986, joined the board of directors in 1990 and started editing in 1992 and i did that because i knew that is the way the board of directors could kick me off the board and be more involved perhaps. But weve grown at a time when other enterprises are shrinking so these suggestions are not just theoretical constructs. So, number one do journalism at street level. Everyone has opinions. Its easy to pontificate. Weve tried to emphasize streetlevel reporting. We like being flies on the wall watching and listening. We dont want to make ourselves the center of attention or the apparent front of wisdom. We like to go out and report in reporting is rare circumstances these days theres little reporting of people listening, watching for describing. Thats number one. Number two, sprinkle salt or sugar. Some of you may work in Corporate Public relations departments. I did that for five years. Some of you are a nonprofit officers were congressional seats have experienced their and i know that the job for people ichild for peoplein that situate your organization or your boss good. I did some of that. I worked at dupont for five years and it was great educationally and financially for the task was to handheld sugar, statements that really sometimes covered up the truth. Sometimes people forget the line between Good Journalism is actually goinofactually going oo honestly report what is going on without doing it anywa in a wayt is designed to popularize, publicize. Sugar isnt very helpful either. It covers up the truth and is in Good Journalism. Salt and taste and is also a preservative that is our goal and it makes us unpopular in certain quarters in putting certain conservative quarters. Number three we try to avoid entangling alliances. We can be solved not sugar because they dont have to scratch the back of other organizations even when they scratch yours. At world, yes i guess i am i Hope Christian first, conservative second, but i am a conservative and the world can be the same way but its not perfect conservative movement. We are not part of the evangelical movement either. We can and we do criticize other groups. More than 20 years ago, 23 actually, world was a move of the organization we learn that the code of ethics prohibited criticism of other members detonated a Mutual Protection society and sometimes organizations we resigned from the epa and try to avoid such entanglements so independence is really important. Number four, we like to publish sensational facts but we try to use understated like the movie franchise with scream on the screen to and so forth. People who get paid by clicks that get click bait tha that ist healthy for producers or consumers. We have a lot of media we try to tell not to screa screen and tho different from a lot of journalism these days. Number five, we try to remembero remember the theological reason for not screaming. The sky is not falling because god holds up the sky. We had we have a flutter long ad he promised not to send another one. This year is the 75th year since we invented Nuclear Bombs and used two of them on japan. Its absolutely miraculous that during decades of cold war we didnt have a nuclear war. There were times we came close. Im not awari am not aware of an Human History that a massively effective new weapon hasnt been used for such a long time. That is amazing. When i think of this, god is so great we cant get our arms around him hes clearly had his arms around us. Five years. The co nearly 500 years agon calhoun wrote that if the graze upon his works we would be restored by his goodness. And all of the stuff that goes on, still amazingly we havent had a disaster i think anyone would have predicted we would have had by now. I looked at predictions back in the first decade of the century and people were predicting that there would be Nuclear Bombs smuggled in and better than 50 we would have a Nuclear Incident in this country in the next five or ten years. That hasnt happened and i guess we keep praying that it doesnt. Gods work keeping us from killing each other to death tolls in the billions is a miracle of mercy. My apologize to go apologies for preaching, can i hear an amen . [laughter] now lets go into some deeper water. You may know the truth about john dillon to direct all reporting and writing sometimes in a very implicit wake of a sometimes exclusively but not without a degree or position on something. When the Fire Fighters fight fire we cheer for the firefighters, not the fire. When we have discoveries that help people fight cancer we are glad for those. We are not choosing for the cancer. These days people think things that was understood that they arent cheering for the social cancer as well but reporting is direct reporting. In the 20th century some journalists pushed back against what used to be called objectivity and some still argued people increasingly understood what the camera shows depend on where we point it, what kind of film you have and so on so to update the metaphor you are more than your smartphone, the smartphone depends where youre standing in when you turn it off you decide which photos and sound tricky for playback but the reporters s disciples on what is most important to ignore and the judgments, ideologies so does that mean it is hopeless, not exactly. In future stories protagonist, antagonist admission obstacles someone does something but they decide who it is, what it represents and again i stress that because it leads to people throwing up their hands. If objectivity doesnt work financial subject. This brings us to point number seven in the Mission Statement we try to provide biblically object of journalism that informs, educates and inspires. Biblical objectivity is different from the motion sometimes people have a hard time getting their arms around it so i tried to explain. For 23 years now ive owned and mostly lived in a house in texas called edwards mountain. It sways slightly when heavy wind hits but the builder of the house nextdoor selec. He knew how the house was made because he made it. Journalists conventionally described objectivity as getting opinions equally. But say my neighbor down the street says my house will fall down if it gets to 10 miles an hour and maybe a neighbor across the street says it is made of kryptonite and would reject an attack even the superman and maybe on the other side but if i quote all of them equally well i have an objective story, no even if they were all experts i wouldnt have an objectively accurate story because they dont know my house the way my builder knows my house. God is the daughter o builder oe they all live in. Only god knows the true objective nature of things and have come to learn through some hard things believe the bible is the only accurate view of the world which means the only true objectivity is biblical objectivity. Do i expect others to believe that, probably not unless god impresses upon them as he did the whole these years ago. Why he doesnt do it for everyone i dont know. Its the way he is. If you have seen the weird beautiful movie world of dreams, they cannot see the Baseball Players but they are still there. So what do we do, how do we sort out this is our technique. When we have the classes they are they sometimes take your students out to it i was so poor constantly running under bushes and trees and so forth and everybody was in the water at some point and one potential reporter ended up in the middle saying let me out. We actually have a report and get together as we are discussing stories and how to approach them whos going to be the protagonist and antagonist we actually use this as a shorthand because people that know white water rapids to six times number one is gently down the stream and unless you are an expert you will probably die. Class one is where the bible takes the position its easy to follow along for example in a story about sexual practice we would make an adulterer a hero. I want to emphasize taking a strong position where god takes one doesnt give us the way to misquote opponents were mischaracterized or one ridiculed them. But nevertheless here is a clear position in the way they told the story. Class to the bible takes an implicit position for example parents are responsible for the education of children so they support biblebased schooling at home and private schools were public if the parents think that is best for their particular situation but we dont think that they should pretend god doesnt exist, tha, the distant future wilthat isntnatural, is. So in class to b two we will taa position that we will not be as strong, we will offer alternatives but still say there theres something the bible shows theres something right as something wrong. Class b. Partisan on both sides of scripture verses. We talk about the unborn, uneducated, but what is most important is that whether we feel right just that whether we are helping or hurting. With a capacity to be creative and productive to a greater or lesser extent i think we find from experience encouraging people not to work often is more harmful rather than helpful and we will look at it that way. What they do when there is a person at Union Station asking for money, t ticket or not to give, this is hard and we will probably still get it wrong a lot of times but we would say there is biblical teaching that is very useful in this and then we come to class for where there is no political path and we can look at the historical experience an into the biblical understanding of human nature for example if we shouldnt trust tyrants to honor the peace treaty we see teaching from the bible withou about being suspicd the circumstances. Class five there is no clear historical or psychological trail but theres some experience that leads us to be weary. I can choose one particular example because we are sitting here just off capitol hill. We shouldnt expect efficiency from big democracies. Its something we learned from history and human nature something is gained something is lost in the process and we shouldnt be surprised when we have big plans and projects and they turn out to be harmful rather than helpful independent class six this is like going over the waterfall rapids we are on our own. Specific foreignpolicy matters or Foreign Trade agreements they have different perspectives and coverage might be similar to that of a generation ago you would see the balancing of subjectivity because we dont know and we tried hard not to either overseas or underused scripture. One of the things i first saw going to church there was a group rating members of congress on the road and whether they were good people or evil people, one of the questions was should the u. S. Relinquished control of the panama canal. If you were against it, youre on gods side and if you were against for if you are on satans side or Something Like that. There is no book of the panama canal and the bible and it doesnt tell us what to do on some situations like that. This sermon is necessary if we wont pretend to say we know what to do. They may sometimes get our belief and say we dont know we are not experts. So classification in this way weve been using it for 20 years. I think it helps us to avoid over using the bible which is a tendency among some theological conservatives, for under using and which is a tendency of theological liberals. They try to take strong stands is clear, and we have the opportunity to get things right by trying to practice biblical objectivity, but christians are not immune to the temptations anofpressures that affect other journalists. God is holy, we are sinners, the heavens declare the glory of god proclaimed the sinfulness of man. So biblical journalism is against that. And we try to do this, be very careful not to mischaracterize, abuse or the components because some of the people, this is the strongest poet who were abortionist. God says sinners and we try to show this in our reporting and we have a podcast, the world and everything in it, i recommend. We are starting some podcast series right now and since rob mentioned, my writing on compassion finding we have a series called the effect of compassion, adjusted episode for this week, the changes in washington back in the 1990s and so forth. If you want to get history, take a listen to that, 20 or 25 minutes, each episode, just put in the world and everything in it and you can listen to my podcast. And people up to age 30, we have that in the summer, the thing that i normally enjoy, i enjoy my teaching at the university of texas for that many years but when you see for people for three hours a week for 15 weeks, you dont get to know the people in the classroom. So within 11 times we have a big career course that my wife and i teach in our living room in austin for ten people each time and we have a very intensive week, 30 thursday, friday, saturday till late at night and some people need a day of rest and then we go again on monday, tuesday and wednesday. Its been the best teaching experience of my life because we get to know the people in our house, so forth in the whole bunch become correspondence and become reporters. These are usually people in their 40s who are very successful in occupation but board at that point, either their board or they want to serve god into different way. If anybody interested just click on our website at world journalisJournalism Institute. O. World ji. Org and with that i will show my humility by stopping for questions or comments. Thank you all very much. Thank you so much. Again i encourage you to pick up a copy of the book in the lobby, we will take questions, i have a couple i want to ask, i want to pick up where you left off at the end, specifically when it comes to the next generation of journalism, you obviously have devoted yourself to this particular endeavor to make sure youre better prepared as they enter the world, we also live in a time where the institutions have reached significant lows, historical lows and journalism has no affection to that. Do you see the everchanging, do you see the trust and journalism ever increasing the level it may been in the past, what is your message as you sent people to the world, whether theyre coming out of college, to do a better job in their own career. You asked, will this ever change, ever is a very long time. Will it change in any relatively short period of time like the next several decades, i am hopeful, unexpected but i am hopeful because with the other situations where journalist, trust and journalism was almost nonexistent. And journalism pop back. One example reading a couple of books on early journalism history, journalist back in the 1600s to 1700s were really hacked completely. They were basically their Job Description was to do Public Relation for the world governor to come here in the colonies. No one expected that it was truthful, it was Public Relation. Simple. In the 1730s in new york there was a fellow named john peters anger decided to tell the truthn sunday heard about telling the truth and he did not want to Say Something different the next day. So we told the truth about the governor from new york who slowly and from the indians, stole sheep from settlers, and he told the truth about this guy and he went to jail. Because he was breaking the law that point. Both custom and law at the point was a journalist job was to make the government look good and not tell the truth. He stuck with it and spent eight month or so in prison and then there was a trial and at the trial, those lawyer from philadelphia proclaimed that the jury should become the runaway jury. Regardless of what the law said, hamilton talked about elijah and the bible that spoke truth and other people did the same and john peters was doing the same to this governor. The jury became their own jury, they took their own liberty in their hands by saying not guilty and not guilty and when asked by the chief the justice was presiding, how can we say that, they just kept saying not guilty because if they had reason that they being dropped under direct obstacle to bullet. That changed that started to change journalistic process enter practice. 40 years later you have the American Revolution led by journalist who failed samuel adams. He had total trust by the people in boston some to liberty and others because they saw him not at the hack but somebody who told the truth. Theres an enormous change at that point, it was a very high repute from the colonial period for the next two decades, it started to change in the 1850s, popped back in the early 1900s when there was muckrakers who mocked rake, honest people and generally they were. You see this, i cannot predict when this will pop back but if theres more journalist from telling the truth then sprinkling salt rather than sugar i think that can happen. I have other questions i like to ask him about start in the back and please introduce yourself and the organization you affiliated with. Joe with the emerging studies, iran the Journalism Program there. I wanted to get your opinion on what do you think of undergraduate Journalism Schools and what advice you give to students who want to study journalism and im curious the publications out there, are there any that you admire and think theyre doing a decent job now . Let me deal with the last question first. We have lots of fans and sometimes they will write me or come up and say i love world, i love your podcast, its only thing i listen to. In my response to that is a little bit a horror. Im glad they like it but i suggest, im glad you read it, but you should read other things to him a recommendation i used to say you should read the nortnew york times and washingtn post, i do not do that anymore because its so propagandistic. But rainouts over the top. The liberal publication i recommend because its coming a different worldview but they are good writers, good reporters and i know some of them and they are good people even though we disagree on this. Thats my usual thing i say and also read on the website and so forth. As far journalism goes, i started teaching journalism at the university of texas in 1983 and even though i was very explicit about this, it did not come from a christian perspective, they thought that was okay because they actually i had been a reporter. I speak that language and understand and i was on the side of journalism and reporters. I was not calling them enemies in that way everyone would disagree. What happened over the years at that point the university of texas Journalism School, the professors were old reporters. Texas liberal reporters which made it interesting, i enjoyed them and they tolerated me. That changed over the years, when i left there in 2008 and really pushed which amazed and horrified some people. By the time i left a lot of the professors were marxist either hard or soft, had no journalism experience. In the new theory in my opinion in a twisted way but they did not know journalism. There was still a couple who actually had been reporters and really believed in writing and reporting in getting out and not sucking our thumbs. But mostly it was pretty bad. So it was no fun anymore. I dont know intimately any other sekulow Journalism Program of similar things have happened elsewhere. So what i recommend for journalism education, these are christian places that i know, not everyones cup of tea but in virginia in our west of here has journalism teaching by the student that i supervise. Dorf college in iowa, a former Washington Bureau chief, you get tired and you go teach. And i recommend another but those are the two are like best. But it is hard for students. , i represent the denominational in d. C. Two questions interconnected, you love and came out with a book talking about institutions and how they moved to platforms and the negative impact that its had in peoples perception of the benefit of an institution being formative in preformative. I love to hear your thoughts on that. But then when you mention the fact that you came to christianity through communism, i was thinking about douglas hyde eventually left christianity because he became disillusioned with the ability to affect the changer he wanted and how do you fight against that christian publication. I read hydes book which he wrote when he was christian and im not familiar with his later experience, did he write something about this . I believe it was scheduled to be published he declined allowing it to be republished because he said i no longer adhere to that, he wrote in dedication to leadership he felt like christianity was the way to affect the change that he wanted in the world and he did not see it coming. That is sad to hear. And we do have lots of biblical that dont become weary in doing good and so forth. But sometimes when we become reporters we have were conservative but we differ from moving some ways, we tend to be proimmigration program 3d. One of our brilliant young reporters and she gets weary and we gotta keep at it. I could go on about the platform question and is really hard these days and publishing books, i see publishers including christian publishers no longer the quality of the book but the platform. And thats a mess. In some ways. Ill tell you, i flew in last night and just coming from reagan airport, you all have the experience coming in and see a brightly lit up. Same stuff there all the time, the big things, the lincoln memorial, the jefferson memorial, washington monument, the capital and so forth. The people change, last night i grew up in boston in group at fenway park, and spent so much time there that these days when i go back there i feel them walking along to the tunnels and so forth, i feel i going to go around the corner and see myself when i was ten years old. Its a weird sensation. Im just not familiar at the same time. Washington, the first time i ever spent more than just a day here was in 1970 when i was 20 years old and this was a big, big antibiotic vietnam demonstration. In the most memorable thing there, we had a demonstration one day and we were supposed to go in lobby are members of congress and so forth so the end of the day i hadnt had much success, we went over to the office of the speaker of the house, John Mccormick of massachusetts, lo and behold this is by 15 530 and we had actually a very enjoyable halfhour, he just enjoyed, these kids are coming, i could give them some rest. But at the end of the experience he took us into the House Chamber and there were four of us there and he said here is mature that i sit in, i have to go and have dinner with my wife take this chair and you can spin around and enjoy that and we all did. We thought of the cells as revolutionary, little kids on a chair. And thats where i think we all tend to be, we get tired of things we might not have as long Attention Span as needed and i wrote a book on the history of abortion back in 1992 and im updating that now, ive been reading about some of the people who have been in the Prolife Group for 40 years. In friday we will actually be walking with a people and do something for a podcast. That makes things incredible patience and result in enormous frustration year after year after year. It is the grace of god to be able to do that. I could go on but im just impressed as a journalist i tend to have a mediumsize Attention Span which means i dont want to spend my whole life, but im impressive people have done that and bob who is on the wall for stuff for decades, that is really incredible perseverance and it requires that type of patients as opposed to the idea that will find a platform and sell books and go on with my life. I admire the people, its a grace of god. Thank you. Lets go up front in the second row. Hi, Michael Easter with the Charlemagne Institute and correspondent. Several years ago you developed several articles for younger readers, can you explain the rationale behind that. Theatricals for younger . For younger readers. That started in 1980 because how many of you when you were in Elementary School salt publication called the weekly reader . A bunch of people. I didnt want to send up something that was a urchin alternative, not that he was evil but he was hoping for something more. Thats to set up to serve the purpose and still going after all these years and we will start doing videos this fall for the Christian School classrooms. It is still there. We will start out it was losing money like crazy and now its other way around, is not making money like crazy but we do have one or 2 left at the end of the year. [laughter] but thats part of the enterprise to try to help kids develop a news habit. Greg piper with the college fix, i interviewed you 20 years ago and is nice to see you again. I want to ask you about business model, it seems like a lot of the problems in journalism is the way that you make money on it, it does not produce Good Journalism, what do you see as a passport that people dont think much about. Journalism in the United States has had different models, originally unc newspapers in the 1700s or 1800s, funded by a board they did not call them subscribers, painters and so forth that it became an advertising base model, and they sell those people to the ads, it is returning to the earlier model of donors, funders, nonprofit organizations, very often. In the publications that dont have one big sugar daddy or a lot of small ones in trouble. In the big sugar daddy has its own sense of problems, with the Washington Post ends with hundreds of without his trouble. Muchly to have a diversified bunch of donors. Thats what theyre actually doing, we have our money coming in from donations than subscriptions and thats what im recommending, there are two people that are graduated who have set up their own publications, one in a small city in california and when trying to make it in the big city in austin. Fighting the alternative. I believe there in or moving towards a nonprofit model with donors. If you have lots of donors then you are free from having an alliance of having to follow one particular person or group of people are saying. That is our goal to have diversified giving. But then you have to show people in the committee what youre supporting. Andrew now here in our world and youll hear. In a way in pr is a model and its mostly a covered money sale. They do such a firstclass job of what they do from the worldview, its opposed to christian radio and such. If i could ask a followup and then will go down here. Certainly the daily signal has a similar model of the Heritage Foundation and airport allows us to have the Financial Independence to do the policy research and reporting on the tough issues. My question for you, you have been editorinchief long enough to see the attainment interchanges of social media obviously playing a big role today. How have you been able to adapt and as you said in your top row world and the time where Many Organizations are struggling. Good question. Im not very good at it, im thinking of when i came to washington as a young guy and im an old guy now and im behind the curve. Yesterday i was talking with one of our people and saying i looked at facebook and we really need to refresh that in the little bit of the stuff that we have their and we have people applying to the college and you see on facebook, we still have our facebook thing, that is not most of what we do and then he gave me the names of a couple other things like somethings ive heard of like instagram and so forth and one i had not heard of. What we do, we have young people who know stuff, i still tend to use email the way god made it as opposed to something else. [laughter] im an old email fogey at this point. Theres another part . That satisfies it. Lets overhear and then will go back there. Biblically and as a christian, how have you viewed and covered the impeachment of William Jefferson and clinton and now the impeachment of donald john trump. Thats a really interesting question, i question enormous interest about 2000 of our readers in 2016 sent me complaining letters. We said in 2016 that we considered both are president and Hillary Clinton unfit to be president. In saying that about donald trump, we basically are saying he had not shown the character that we hope the president would show. And is he did not seem to be a person to care for control of his emotions. Which is also useful to have in a leader. And the other thing, im actually surprised that trump has been as conservative as he has been, i did not expect that either. Basically we said there unfit and we have one cover with Hillary Clinton, the grim reaper and then we had another cover with trump with a smaller inside picture of a cover we did 20 years before bill clinton. And basically we had thought that clinton should resign in office, we were not hip on impeaching him because depending on the definition of impeachment, but we did hope you do an honorable thing and resign from office so we figured since we did that with a democrat we should try to apply the same standard to donald trump. And he did not show the character either. That was then and as you can imagine i got about 2000 angry letters from our subscribers, we lost subscriptions and advertising. But this is something that everyone in our staff, we all discussed this and agreed and we have a wonderful publisher who knew the cost and say go for it. So we did. I still feel at a microlevel donald trump is unfit to be president in terms not so much character questions but just the way he reacts to things and from our people who know some things and know about his decisionmaking process. But thats at a microlevel. I have not written about this so still thinking it through, but heres where im going, between microeconomics and macroeconomics in talking about evolution, people make a distinction between micro and macro. Thats also a distinction. In my view trump remains micro unfit but macro, there are differences we have as well as myself but overall hes doing a good job in a tough environment. So this leaves me in a certain difficulty. What we are doing is not making any announcements, were going issue by issue and report by report. We probably are about 5050 on trump, were not part of the cheerleading and not part of the rampant and vicious attacking that goes on. Theres a very hard job, hes the president of all of us and we respect him as president. So for the president job these days are somebody whos not nominated in chief, hes done a good job of that not only in the Supreme Court but the judicial system, he has achieved a lot. Some of the regulations he has gotten rid of our one that deserve to be buried. So we just want to continue reporting actions primarily not just words, praising and all the good actions he has had and whether all make any general statements, im not quite sure. But its a tough situation. I am certainly not i never was and im not part of the never trumpers just because never is a long time. In the people who think the people think one christian leader was referred to donald trump, i disagree with that and i also disagree with people saying hes the worst president ever, weve had a lot of far worse. And i kind of enjoy in a way, one of the things in washington have different receipt of the circus which is a fun thing being a journalist. I love trumps tweeting. , im not giving you a good answer, im stuttering around. What would you say century into the question. I was and never trumper but now ive agreed with much that he has done but i also believe he isnt morally or temperamentally fit for the presidency. The problem is basically we felt, i felt another people felt that as a magazine we need to be evenhanded basically. So we did not tell people who to vote for in a certainly did not tell anyone who voted for trump i did not say you are wrong to do that. I think its a mistake to be calling him the greatest christian president , it was a very hard decision for people to make and maybe not as hard decision this time since a Democrat Party is over to the left. But who they nominate its quite likely they will nominate a person who is macro unfit to be president. And perhaps micro as well. The problem is a Supreme Court, they have taken so much power into itself at the nominator in chief position its a really crucial position. I am troubled by this and i suspect some of you are too. Life is full of trouble and as part of realizing this is a world, a wonderful place but full of sin and we have to try to walk away through without dying. One final question and then he will sign books after word words. My name is maggie and i work at heritage. With social media, twitter, reddit, it seems like everybodys become a journalist you see that good or threat as traditional journalism. Its a really good question, be careful what you wish for, i grew up in a time where there was very little competition in journalism. Typically one newspaper in the three networks. But they were all the same in soft liberalism and so forth. So i initially was very glad and still glad to see the greater diversity, its wonderful if someone goes through and becomes a publisher and editor if they want to. Thats terrific. Never before have we had the opportunity in american journalism. The problem comes is there really is so much fake news author and at least in the old days with this one fish liberalism, at least there was some check for putting out stuff that was untrue. In that check no longer exist because so many people are no longer reporters but people who take other stuff and retweet it and so forth. All sorts of lies get passed around like crazy. So something lost in something again. Overall, i still like it but there are problems. Problems among reporters and thats why we really try to stress this is why i enjoy reading the alie atlantic. Its a different worldview but i see reporters tried to tell the truth and not just propaganda. Marvin, thank you for sharing your advice on journalism, really thoughtful book and your remarks today we appreciate and we appreciate your leadership, we think you and we hope you will come back to the Heritage Foundation in the future. Please join me in thanking Marvin Olasky. [applause] if you would like to purchase a copy of the book there available outside and marvin will stay on the stage for signing them. [inaudible conversations] cspan washington journal, live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. Coming up wednesday morning former chair and president of the ux export and import bank on his new book trade is not a four letter word. And jeremy butler, navy veteran and ceo of iraq in a afghanistan and america talks about those words. Part of museum week, with director as we discussed the 19th amendment centennial. Watch cspan washington journal, live at seven eastern wednesday morning. And be sure to watch washington journal all this week for museum week, thursday morning will explore the sicilian national xenium of american indians. Live wednesday on the cspan network a look at efforts to counter propaganda and disinformation, we are live from the George Washington University Program on extremism. That is at 10 00 a. M. On cspan. At 1 00 p. M. The announcement of this years george polk award in journalism and on how reporters cover wars per 9 00 p. M. President trump holds a Campaign Rally in phoenix, arizona, on cspan2 815 am political host a conversation about heart enter Party Leaders and Campaign Strategist plane to and gain liberalized ahead of the president ial election. On cspan3 at 9 00 a. M. Ryan mccarthy and army chief of staff on the armys new modernization strategy for competing against nations like russia and china. [inaudible conversations] please welcome norman