Good afternoon, welcome to the Heritage Foundation, executive editor of the daily signal, courtesy to our speaker today i would like to ask that you silence your cell phone although dont turn them off because we do encourage you to tweet and share on social media about todays program to help spread the word. You can find on Heritage Feed on both channels and platforms, to introduce our guest today marvin olasky, former visiting fellow and close friend of our 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 and a marxist in high school and joined the communist party in 1970s. He was at the university of michigan working on ph. D that he had spiritual awakening and baptized into the Presbyterian Church in 1976, he later became the founder of redimo Presbyterian Church in austin texas in 1982. After college he taught at university of texas at austin and became a reporter for the daily news and boston globe. First book garnered him significant attention and also caused the eye of the Bradley Foundation which supported his visiting fellowship right here at the Heritage Foundation for 2 years. Newt gingrich, speaker of the house distributed to every member at the time and also what inspired the phrase compassionate conservatism. Marvin was instrumental of World Institute out which hes now the dean of and recruit and train christian journalists and inject them in Mainstream Media and we certainly do need that. Hes the editorinchief of world which is a multimedia News Organization that reports from a christian world view. You can follow him on twitter at marvinolasky. Most recent book is reforming journalism, been described as faithfill history of journalism and useful tips on news writing and advise and advocating conservative convictions and medium thats dominated by the left. As someone who went to Journalism School myself and spent time as journalist in washington i enjoyed reading it. We have copies for sale if you leave the auditorium today in the lobby. Now to tell us more about reforming journalism i would like to welcome marvin olasky. [applause] thank you, rob, great to be back at heritage. I really spent the most Productive Research year of my life here in 1989, 1990. This building was the base for my trips to the library of commerce about 5 blocks away and it was fun. My research turned into american compassion, people say it made a different in the drive of welfare reform in mid1990s. I like to think that change helped people move from the welfare world into productive work, so im grateful to heritage for that contribution to fighting poverty in america. Arthur brooks was a friend of mine, he got Barack Obamas job to drop im a conservative because i care about helping the poor. I am grateful to heritage for spending the year here with the nefarious background that rob referred to. Back in the 1970s i thought i was pretty smart. I had high sat scores, diploma, work in bigtime journalism. I was basically a leftwing protestor, invited him to house of power and i was so smart that was one of the stupidest thing anybody could do i joined the communist party as rob said and purely through gods grace i came out of it and in retrospect it was a beneficial experience, not sure for others because it made me realize how stupid i am and thats an important thing for all of us to come to mind. It helped me to understand that other people also considered smart are also stupid. I started wondering about where i could go to find true wisdom. I became skeptical of existential productivity and that brings me to todays budget. In September Steve bannon, you heard of him, former trump aide, spoke to conservative group in st. Louis and asked do you think its been unpleasant and nasty to date, you havent seen anything. The 2020 campaign will go down as the most vitriol and nastiest in american history. Its very simple. We win, we save the country. Well, no, we do not. We do not win, we do not save the country if we win by escalating anger, whoever on the left or on the right wins by that sword will eventually die by it. Just a little history. The United States really has been exceptional and data about the revolutions, the American Revolution is the only one that did not become disastrous. Revolutions in france, russia which i became familiar with in my communist days, china, cuba, cambodia, other countries. They all started with ideals that quickly became idols, that could happen here. Not next probably not in the next decade but could happen. I visited argentina last month where cycles of inflation, that could happen here. We could become even like venezuela where class warfare has hurt all classes. Journalism vitriol is part of the problem. If we keep escalating our cultural decay, debtdriven natural bankruptcy, we will lead per people to go from fierce words to sticks and stones. The objectivity wasnt all that good, certainly doesnt work now. Other alternatives. I would like to lay 9 suggestions i hope in biblical teaching that might help journalism part of the solution rather than part of the problem. I do want to stress that these suggestions when i was at heritage 30 years ago, i walked to Union Station and worked with bells in 1986, joined the board of directors in 199 and started editing in 1992. I suspect i did that because board of directors knew they could kick me off the board and just be more active perhaps in other types of mischief. But we have grown at a time when other journalistic enterprising are shrinking, so these 9 suggestions have made their not just theoretical contests and learned that they work. Number one, do journalism at street level not suite level. Inch has opinions and the world that we have tried to emphasize really tough time consuming streetlevel reporting. We like being flies on the wall watching and listening. We dont want to make ourselves the center of attention action, we especially dont want to make ourselves apparent fond of wisdom. We would like to go out and report and reporting is fallen into rare circumstances these days, theres so much opinion journalism, very little reporting, people actually listening, paying attention, watching, describing, thats number 1. Number 2, sprinkle salt, not sugar. Some of you may work in Corporate Public relations departments. I did that for 5 years. Some of you are in nonprofit officers or congressional suites, ive had some experience there. And i know that the job for people and that situation is to make your organization or your boss look good. I did some of that. I worked at the pond for 5 years, great educationally and financially but the task really was to hand out sugar, sweet statements but sometimes covered up the truth. Thats not Good Journalism and sometimes people are forgetting the divide between the journalism of actually going out and really trying to honestly report whats going on without doing away thats designed to popularize organization, group or individual and sugarrism is really help, gives sugar fixes. It covers up the truth. Salt adds tastes, also a preservative, thats our goal and makes us unpopular in certain corridors and including conservative corridors because number 3, we try to avoid enhanging entangling alliances. We dont have the scratch the backs of other organizations. I guess i am christian first, conservative second. I am a conservative. The world largely can be the same way but not part of the conservative movement. We are not part of the evangelical movement either. We do and we can criticize other groups. More than 20 years ago, 23 years ago, member of evangelical press association, the code of ethics prevented criticism of other members. That made it a mutual protecting society and sometimes organizations are conservative and christian sometimes are. We tried to avoid such entanglements ever since. Independence is really important. Number 4, we like to publish sensational facts but we try to use understated pros, much of journalism has become like a movie franchise, screen 1, screen 2, screen 3 and so forth. People who get paid by clicks create click bait, thats not healthy for consumers or producers. We do have lots of sensational move. Thats also very different sadly from a lot of journalisms these days. Number 5, we try to remember the theological reason for not screaming. The sky is not falling because god holds up the sky. We had a flood a long time ago, god promised not to send another one. This year is the 75th year since we invented Nuclear Bombs and used 2 of them on japan. It is absolutely miraculous that during decades of cold war we did not have a nuclear war. There were times we claim close. Im not aware of any time in couple history that massively effective weapon hasnt been used for a long time. Thats amazing. Its its not natural, its super natural. When i think of this im filled with thanksgiving and you should be too. God is to great that we cant get our arms around him but hes clearly had his arms around us. Nearly 5020 years ago john calvin wrote about how we ought to gave upon gods words, restored by goodness and with all of that the rotten stuff that goes on, still amazingly we havent had the disaster that 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 snuggled even and people giving odds better than 50 that we would have a Nuclear Incident sometimes in the country in next 5 or 10 years and that hasnt happened and keep praying that it hasnt happened. Gods work killing us from each other is miracles mercy. My apologizes for preaching, do i hear an amen . Six, now that ive moving to theology let me go to deeper word. You may know something about bob dylan, you have going to have to serve somebody. Sometimes in a implicit way or explicitly but not telephone simple story without some degree of position on something when firefighters fight fire we cheer for the firefighters and not the fire. When when we have discoveries that help people fight cancer we are glad of those discoveries. These days a lot of people think that stuff that used to be popular is actual social cancer of some time, all reporting in some ways is direct reporting. In the 20th century some journalists pushed back against what used to be called objectivity and some still argue that in objective reporting, reported functional like a camera but people increasingly understood, we certainly did, people in journalism certainly did that what a camera shows the kind of lens and film you have and so on. So to update metaphor, youre more than your smartphone. Smartphone records depends where youre standing, when you turn on and when you turn off, you decides what photos and sound to keep and show or play back. When covering stories, reporters put what decide and what to believe. So what does that mean . Does mean its hopeless that everything is opinion . Not exactly. In featured stories particularly the chose of protagonist mission obstacles. Even simple stories has protagonist and antagonist, missions, obstacles. Someone does something because but and then you have tensions that come in. Reporters decide what it represents and i stress that because that leads to i know sometimes people throwing up their hands. Conventional objectivity doesnt work its all subject. This brings us to point number 7 here and World Mission statement. We try to provide biblicically objective journalism that informs, educates and inspires, biblical objectivity. Its so different from objectivity that some people sometimes have hard time getting around, try to explain. For 23 years now, ive owned and mostly lived in a tall house in hillside in texas except in texas its called edwards mountain, the hill. The house sways slightly when heavy wind hits and then initially made me nervous. You feel some movement, but the builder to have house lived next door, so i could actually ask him about the construction and show it was pretty solid and hasnt fell down yet. He knew how the house was made because he had made it. Journalists conventionally throughout the 20th century and still these days sometimes describe objectivity as getting opinions ab and c including them equally. Same my neighbor down the street, and maybe a neighbor across the street says, well, its made of criptonite and reject an attack even by superman and maybe neighbor on the other side, my house is made of trees, i can eat may wait out of it. If i quote all their opinions equally, would i have an objective story . Well, no. Even if they were all experts and not slightly nutty, im specifically generically, not my particular neighbors, i stilled would not have accurate story. They dont know my house the way i know the house. It does not give as an on thive answer. What does . God is the builder of the house we live in. He gave us the bible which describes how the house is made and what its made of. There were hard things but useful. I believe that his book the bible is the only completely objective and accurate view of the world which means the only true objectivity is biblical objectivity. I expect others to believe that, probably not unless god impresses upon them unless he impressed upon many years ago. Why he doesnt do it for everyone, i dont know. Thats the way it is. If any of you have seen the weird but wonderful movie field of dreams, some people cant see the Baseball Players but they are still there. How do we sort out whats real and whats true and whats not . This leads to number 8. This is our technique here, metaphor whitewater rapids. Theres good whitewater rapids 40 miles or so. When we had journalistic class affair we would take students to it and 25 students at a time. 6 rubber boats and i was captain and only one that had experience, i was such a poor captain running it under bushes and under trees and so forth and everyone ended in the water and one potential report ended up in the middle saying let me out, let me out which i eventually did. Whitewater rapids, we have reporters all over the country, a couple in afteroccasion african nation and so forth. Who will be our protagonist, antagonist and so forth. We actually use this rapid as a shorthand because people who know whitewater rapids talk about six kinds of rapids, number one gently down the stream. Anyone can do it. Im capable of doing a number 3. Number 6 is going over waterfall and unless youre a real expert youre probably going to die and best to avoid. Class 1, class 1 is where the bible takes explicit position and easy to follow along. For example, adultery is wrong, so in a story about Sexual Practices we would not make an adulterer a hero. Does not give us leeway to misquote opponents, ridicule. God is god of true. Does not require Public Relations help. Class 2, the bible takes implicit position, for example, parents are responsible for the education of the children so we do support biblebase schooling at home and private schools or Public Schools if the parents think its best for their particular situation. We dont think those schools should pretend that god doesnt exist. Thats taking a definite position. On class 2, again, we will take a position but we may not be as strongly. We will certainly acknowledge as we always do alternatives but we will still say theres something that the bible chose right and something wrong with this. Class 3, partisans on both sides can quote scripture verses so only careful study for the bible is to build conclusions. For example, one of the things we tried to do, we talk about showing concern for the uns, the unborn, uneducated, unchurch, unfashionable. But whats most important is not whether we feel righteous but whether we are helping or hurting. All people are made in gods image with the capacity to be created and productive to a greater or lesser extent. I think we find from biblical teaching and experience that payments encouraging people not to work are often harmful rather than helpful. And will come at it that way and acknowledge this is a hard thing. You dont know what we do when theres a person at Union Station asking for money to give, not to give. This is hard and requires experience and we probably get it wrong a lot of times but theres biblical teaching thats useful on this and then we come to class 4 where we know theres no clear biblical path and biblical understanding of human nature. For example, we should not trust tyrants to honor peace treaties. Being suspicious of that as well. Class 5, theres no clear historical or psychological trial but theres some experience that leads us to be weary. You know, i can choose one particular example because we are sitting off of capitol hill. We should not expect efficiency from big bureaucracies, something that we learn from human nature. Something is gained but something is lost in that process and we should not be surprised when we make we have big plans and big projects and they actually turn out to be harmful rather than helpful. This is going over waterfall rapids, we are on our own. For example, specific Foreign Policy matters or Foreign Trade agreements. You know, we we will balance different perspectives and coverage might be similar to that of traditional ap story before the ap became politicized but a generation ago you would see the balancing of subjectivity in press story and we will do that often. We dont be very different from that traditional approach because we dont know, we try hard not to either overuse or underuse scripture. When i first became a christian in 1976, one of the first things i saw in the church and there was a group that was rating members of congress on their votes and whether these were, you know, good people based on the people or evil people, one of the one of the questions whether it the u. S. Should relinquish panama canal, if you were against that, you were on satan side or Something Like that. Its pretty silly. Theres no book of panama canal in the bible and doesnt tell us on some situations like that. We wont pretend to say we know what to do. We may sometimes give our opinion but we say, you know, we dont know. We are not experts. So classification, thats why we use it, using it for 20 years. It helps us overuse the bible or underuse it which is liberals. We have the opportunity to get things right by trying to practice but christians are not immune of tempations and pressures that affect other journalists. That leads to my last point number 9. God saves sinners. Thats really important. God is not saving good people or wonderful people or holy people, god saves sinners and really all world is reporting and writing is based on the understanding that god is holy, the heavens with glory of god proclaim simpleness as man. So biblical journalism simplifies and we try to do this, again, being very careful not to mischaracterize or abuse or or think of our opponents as forever enemies because some of the people, this is the week of the prolife march. Somesome of the prolife are proclaimists of the abortionists. God saves sinners and we try to show it in the reporting and world and we have a podcast. The world and everything in it that i recommend to all if youre walking your dog or doing stuff like that. We have actually, we are starting some podcast series right now and and rob mentioned the my writing on compassionate poverty is we have a series right now, podcast history is called effective compassion. Thats going by 11 episodes and deals with changes in washington back in 1990s and so forth. If you want to gain history, take a listen to that. Its about 20 or 25 minutes each episode and just put in effective compassion, put the world and everything in it and then we also have just have a institute for College Students and people up to age 30 or so. And then the thing that i enormously enjoyed. I enjoyed my teaching at the university of texas for all those years, but you know, when you see people for 3 hours a week for 15 weeks it doesnt have the intensity and you dont really get to know the people in a classroom, so we haveweve done it 11 times now. Midcareer course that my wife and i teach in our living room in austin for up 10 people each time and we have a very intensive week. Thursday, friday, saturday from 8 30 in the morning to late at night and sunday people really do need a day of rest and we go again on monday, tuesday and wednesday, and its been really the best teaching experience of my life because we get to know the people that are in our house and so forth and some of them go and become reporters. These are usually people in their 40s who are successful in occupations but are bored at that point in time and want they are either bored or they just want to serve god in a different way. If any of you are interested in that, you can look at the website at World Journalism Institute. Org and with that i will now show my humility by stopping and listening to your questions or comments. So thank you all very much. [applause] marvin, thank you so much. Again, i encourage you to pick up a copy of the book in the lobby. We are going to take questions. I want to pick up right where you left off there at the end specifically when it comes to the next generation of journalists. You obviously have have devoted yourself to to this particular endeavor to making sure that they are better prepared as they enter the world. We also live in a time where trust in institutions has reached significant lows, historic lows and journalism is no exception to that. So twopart question. Do you see that ever changing, do you see that phase or trust in journalism increasing back to the level it may have been in the past . What is your message as you send people out in the world whether theyre in mid40s or coming out of college to do a better job in their own careers and you probably yeah. Will it ever change, ever is a very long time. Will it change in any relatively short period of time like the next several decades . Im hopeful. Dont expect it but i will tell you im hopeful because weve had other situations where journalists trusting journalists was almost nonexistent and journalism popped back, just to give you one example and written a couple of books on early journalism history, journalists back in the 1600s and 1700s were really hacks completely. I mean, they were basically their Job Description was basically to do Public Relations for king or royal governor say in the colonies, nobody expected. It was Public Relations pure and simple. In 1730s in new york there was a fellow named John Peter Zinger who decided to tell the truth and he on sunday, he learned he heard about telling the truth. He didnt Say Something different the next day. He started telling the truth about real government cosby, governor of new york, stole sheep from various settlers, fairly nasty guy and told the truth about the guy and he was breaking the law at that point, the journalist job was to make the king and royal government look good. He spent months in prison and then there was a trial and at the trial his lawyer Henry Hamilton from philadelphia proclaimed that the jury should become what later became run away jury. Regardless what the law said, hamilton talked about how elijah in the bible spoke truth to power and other people did the same and was doing the same to vile governor and thus should not be in prison. The jury became run away jury. They took their own liberty in their hands by saying not guilty, not guilty and when asked by the chief justice the justice who was presiding how can you say that, they just kept saying, not guilty, not guilty because if they gave a reason they would be in direct obstacle of the law. That changed that started to change the opinion of started to change journalistic practice. After that no journalists in the colonies sued for liable by the royal governors and others in that way. 40 years later you have American Revolution led by journalist, brewer named samuel adams. He had total trust of the people in boston because they saw him not as the the hack, but someone who told the truth. Theres an enormous change at that point. Journalism was in high rebukeed and pocked back in early 1900s, so youve seen this roller coaster so i just cant predict to pop back but more journalists for telling the truth and sprinkling salt rather than sugar. Lets see whats on your minds. We will start in the back with joe. Please introduce yourself and any organization that youre affiliated. I run our Journalism Program there. Marvin, i wanted to get your opinion on what you think of undergraduate Journalism Schools and what advice you give to students who want to study journalism and also im curious of secular publications out there that you admire, that you think are doing a decent job or no . Let me deal with the last question first. We have, at world we have lots of fans and sometimes theyll rightly or come up and say to me, i love world, i love your podcast, its the only thing i read, the only thing i listen to and my response to that is theres a little bit of horror and im glad that like it, but no, i suggest no, im glad that you read it, you should read other things too and my recommendation. I used to say, you should read you should read the New York Times and the Washington Post. I dont do that anymore. Now its just over the top. The liberal publication that i recommend is its coming from certainly a different world view and political philosophy but good writers, good reporters and, you know, i know some of them and they are good people even though we disagree on this. Thats my usual thing we say. And its also you can read it on the website and so forth. As far as journalisms goes, i started teaching journalism at the university of texas in 1983 and even though they knew i was explicit about this. They knew im coming from a christian perspective, you know, they thought that was okay because they actually been a reporter and can speak that language and i could understand and i was on the side of journalism and reporters. I wasnt calling them enemies, that way even when we disagreed. And at that point the journalism of texas school the professors, mainly old reporters, texas liberal reporters which made them interesting and cranky but but i enjoyed them and tolerated me. That changed over the years so that when i left there in 2008 relinquished my tenure and by the time i left a lot of the professors were marxists either hard or soft marxists who had no journalism experience and they knew theory in my opinion kind of a twisted way but they didnt know journalism. Theres still a couple who actually had been reporters and and really believed in writing and reporting and getting out and not sucking our thumbs and turning out great propaganda to pieces, but mostly it was just pretty bad so no fun anymore. I dont know if thats the way i dont know intimately any other secular Journalism Program. I wouldnt be surprised if similar things have happened. It happened elsewhere. What i recommend for journalism education, again, these are christian places i know which is not everyones cup of tea but Patrick Henry college in virginia, an hour west of here has some Good Journalism teaching by one of students who i supervise, best sellers. You get tired of it after a while and you go teach. And, you know, i could recommend a couple of others but those are the two i like best but its hard for students. We will come over to this side. Sure. Yeah. Reverend michael, i represent ministry to state, ministry here in dc. Okay. I have two questions that are interconnected. You came out with a book talking about institutions and how theyve kind of moved to platforms and, you know, the negative impact that has had in peoples perceptions of the benefits of an institution being formative and preformative. I would love to hear your thoughts on that and when you mentioned the fact that you came to christianity through communism i was thinking about how douglas hyde eventually left christianity because he became disillusioned with ability to effect the change that he wanted and how do you fight against that at a christian publication . Its interesting. I read hydes book which he wrote when he was a christian and im not familiar with the later experience. Thats news to me, did he write something about this or i believe came out to be when i believe was scheduled to be republished he declined allowing it to be republished because he said i no longer adhere to that because if you wrote in dedication and relationship you really felt like christianity was the way to effect the change that he wanted in the world and just didnt see it coming. Okay. Well, thats sad to hear and, you know, we do have lots of biblical and what i tell reporters we have, again, we are conservative but we differ from conservative movements in some ways, we tend to be proimmigration and prorefugee and one of our brilliant young reporters has been covering this a lot and i think she gets weary and just going to keep at it. You know, i could go on a lot about the platform question and its really hard by the way these days from publishing books. She publishes including christian publishers no so much the quality of the book but the quality of the platform as opposed to quantity and thats a mess in some ways, but no, the things take a long i tell you, just coming from reagan airport and you all have experience coming and you see, same things all of the time. The justin memorial, the washington monument, the capitol and so forth but people change. So last night the basically i grew up in boston, family park, spent so much time there that these days when i go back there i feel as im Walking Around through the tunnels and so forth, i feel like im going to go and see myself when i was 15 years old. Washington here and first time i ever spent more than a day here was in 1970 when i was 20 years old and this is a big, big antivietnam war demonstration and the most memorable thing there was that we had a demonstration one day and then on monday we were supposed to go and lobby members of congress and so forth. I hadnt had much success. We went to the house of the peaker at the time John Mccormick from massachusetts. Low and behold, 5 15, 5 30, the secretary led us in to see him. The kids are coming. I can try to give them some wisdom but the end of that experience, he took us into the House Chamber and said there were four of us there and said, here is my chair that i sit in. I have to go now. I will go now have dinner with my wife. Take this chair and you can spin around it and enjoy that and we all did, so, you know, we were we thought of ourselves as revolutionaryists but we were kids there among the chair and thats the way we all tend to be. We get tired of things. We may not have the Attention Span as needed. I wrote a book about history of abortion in 1992 and my wife and i will be walking with a couple of people and that is incredible patience and resolve and enormous frustration year after year after year. It is a grace of god to be able to do that, im just impressed. As a journalist i tend to have a mediumsize Attention Span which means i dont want to spend my whole life on one issue but im impressed with people in Prolife Movement have done that or bob who has done welfare stuff for decades. Thats really incredible perseverance and requires that type of patience as opposed to the idea we will find a platform and sell books and go on with my life. I admire the people who really stick to it and the grace of god. Thank you. Lets go out front, second row, please. Hi. Michael with institute and former world correspondent. Several years you developed several periodicals for younger readers, can you explain the rationale for that . Periodicals for younger younger readers. Oh, actually that proceeded world, that started in about 1980 because how many of you when youre in Elementary School saw publication saw the weekly leader . Okay. A bunch of people. Yeah, joe we wanted to set something christian alternative. I grew up with weekly reader, not that it was evil but he hoped for something more. He set up for that purpose and still going and will start doing videos for christian classrooms so, yeah, still there. When world started out it was losing money like crazy. Now its somewhat the other way around. We do have maybe one or two dollars worth at the end of the year. We try to [laughter] anyway, thats part of the enterprise to try to help kids, so lets go over to that side. I interviewed you 20 years ago as college journalist. Nice to see you again. I want to ask you about business models. Seemed like a lot of problems in journalism simply the way you make money on it, it does not produce Good Journalism. What do you see as path forward and what do you think people dont think as much about . Journalism in the United States has had different models. Originally youd see newspapers say in the 1700s or 1800s they would be founded by they didnt call them subscribers but patrons and so forth and advertising, circulation and sell ads. Its turning to the earlier model of donors, funders, nonprofit organizations very often and, yeah, the publications that dont have that dont either have one big sugar daddy or small ones are in trouble and the big sugar daddy has its own sense of problems. We have bezos from the Washington Post and so forth. Much better to have widely diversified group of donors and thats basically what world is doing. We have more coming in from donations than subscriptions and advisortizing and advertising and things like that. One in small city in california and one trying to make it in the big city in austin providing alternative. Yeah, i believe they are they are either in or will be moving towards a nonprofit model with donors and if you have lots of donors and you are free from having to be call one person. Thats our goal. You have to show people its worth doing and worth supporting and youre here in world community, youll hear listeners supported and radio. In the way nprs are modeled, n npr and government money and they do such a firstclass job that we try the world and everything, if you listen to it its npr as oppose to kind of christian radio and such. Followup on that and we will go down here. Sure. Certainly the daily signal has a similar model, Heritage Foundation, broadbase of support allows you have to have policy research but also reporting on the tough issues. My question for you is, you have been editorinchief long enough to see the changes in terms of distribution of the content. Social media plays much bigger role, significant role today. How have you been able to adapt and as you say follow your talk grow in this time where it seems that many legacy News Organizations are struggling . Yeah. Good question and, yeah, im not very good at it, you know, im thinking of when i came to washington as a young guy and now im an old guy now and im just behind the curve. I was yesterday i was talking with one of our people and saying, hey, i looked to facebook and we really need to refresh that, and, you know, we have people applying for College Students. You see them on facebook. He said, no, we still have our facebook thing, thats not most of what we do and he gave me the names of couple other things, some things that i have heard of like instagram and so forth and one that i hadnt heard of. What we do is we have young people who know stuff. I still tend to like email which is, you know, the way god made it as opposed to something else. Im just an old email at this point. All right. All right. Lets go onto here. Biblically as a christian how have you viewed and covered impeachment of William Jefferson and impeachment of donald john trump. Thats a really interesting question and a question of enormous interest to about 2,000 of our readers who in 2016 sent me complaining letters. We said we said in 2016 that we considered both our current our president and Hillary Clinton unfit to be president and in saying that about donald trump we are basically saying that he just had not shown the character that we hoped the president would show and also did not seem to be a person in careful control of his emotions which also is useful to have in a leader. Im actually surprised that trump has been conservative as he has been. I didnt expect that either. Basically we said their votes we had one cover with Hillary Clinton with the grim reaper wearing a button im with her and then we had another cover concerning trump and we had a smaller picture of a cover we had done 20 years before on bill clinton and basically we had thought that clinton should resign from office. We werent we hoped that he would do an honorable thing and design from office and we figured since we did that with a democrat we should try to apply the same standard for donald trump and he did not show the character either. Now, that was then and as you can imagine, i got 2,000 angry letters from our subscribers, we lost subscriptions and advertising but this is something that everyone in our staff, well, i yeah, we all we all discussed this, agreed with that and we have a wonderful publisher who knew the cost and said, yeah, go for it and we did. I still feel that at a micro level donald trump is unfit to be president just in terms of of not so much current character questions but just the way he reacts to things and and, you know, from what people who know some things, know about just decisionmaking process, but thats in a micro level and i tend to in my mind and i havent written about this, so im still thinking but here is where im going. Theres been micro economics and macro economics in talking about evolution. Thats also useful distinction. In my view trump remains micro unfit but macro, again, there are some differences we have with them, but overall hes doing a pretty decent job in a very tough environment. So this leads me in a certain bit of difficulty. What we are doing is we are not making any announcements. We are going issue by issue and report by report and probably about 5050. We are not part of of the cheerleading. We are also not part of the rampant and vicious attacks that goes on. He has the very hard job. Hes the president of all of us and respect him as president. We no n hes done a good job of that not only in the Supreme Court but throughout the judicial system. Hes achieved a lot. Some of the regulations that he has gotten rid of. Yeah, we just want to continue reporting actions primary not just words, praising a lot of the good action hes had and whether we will make whether i will make a general statement im still not quite sure but its a tough situation. Im certainly not i never was and i still am not part of the nevertrumpers because like never is a long time, and the people who think that the people who theres one that refers to President Trump as the greatest christian ever, i disagree with that and i kind of enjoy in a way. One of the things here you have in washington, you have frontrow seat at the circus and i enjoyed these days trumps tweeting. [laughter] so, you know, i am not giving you a good answer. Im staggering around here. What would you say since you asked the question . I was a everyone intrumper. Yeah, i was a nevertrumper who now thinks, agree with much of what hes done, but, yeah, i also believe he really isnt morally or temperamentally fit for presidency. The problem is that bill clinton also did. Basically we just felt that i felt and our other people editorial people that as a magazine we need to be evenhanded basically. We didnt tell people who to vote for and i certainly did not tell anyone who voted for trump i did not say youre wrong to do that. I think its a mistake to be, again, calling him the greatest christian president but hard decision for people to make and hell be actually maybe not as hard this time since the Democratic Party has moved so far to the left, but depending on who they nominate, i think its quite likely that they that they will nominate a person who is macro unfit to be president and perhaps micro as well. But the problem really is the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has taken so much power in itself that the nominator in chief position is a really crucial position. So anyway, im troubled by this. I suspect some are troubled by that, you know, life is full of trouble and and its part of realizing that this is a world that is a wonderful place but its full of sin and we have to try to walk our way through without drowning. We will take one final question and then marvin is going stay to sign books afterwards. Sure. Final comment, thank you. Hi, my name is maggie and work at heritage. What social media, twitter, it seems like everybody has become a journalist. Do you see that as a boon or as a threat . Thats a really good question in a sense be careful what you wish for or pray for. I grew up in a time where there was very little competition in journalism. Cities had monopoly newspapers, you had the 3 networks but they were all pretty much the same and soft liberalism and so forth. Certainly it was there. And so, you know, i initially was very glad and still am glad to see this much diversity. Its wonderful that someone goes through World Journalism Institute and not just report it but entrepreneur, publisher and editor. Thats terrific. Never before we had that in american journalism. The problem comes as there really is so much fake news out there and and at least in the old days with the with the swampish liberalism at least there was some check on just putting that stuff that was absolutely totally untrue and that check no longer exists because so many people are no longer reporters but just people who take other stuff and retweet it and and so forth. All sorts of lies get passed around like crazy, something lost and something gained. Thank you for sharing your advice on journalism. We appreciate your leadership and we thank you, we hope you will come back to the Heritage Foundation in the future, please join me in thanking marvin. [applause] if you would like to per interpreters a copy of the book is available outside and marvin will be on the stage for signing them. 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