Transcripts For CSPAN3 Discussion On The Press And The Presidency 20240622

Youre going to move record out of the way. Youre going to move music out of the way and let them do what they do. Unless its premised on something entirely different, which is cool, you wouldnt be looking for talent anyway. You let people do what they do, give them rope and let them connect in ways only a truly talented person can connect. John, the greatest commitment you could pay me and you paid me was that i asked you tough questions. I would hate to stand here or sit here in front of our peers and ask you softball questions. But i wouldnt ask any question that i didnt think you can answer, so my compliment back to you as you did a heck of a job answering some tough questions and im very grateful. Thank you john dickey. Thank you. Thursday between 1 00 p. M. And 8 00 p. M. On cspan3, a focus on issues related to aging. Well show you a Senate Hearing on effort to fight alzheimers disease followed by portions of white house conference on aging 67 6789. Next a group of reporters discuss their joshs covering the white house and changing relationship between president ial relations and press core. After that cartoonists discuss the role of satire. Then a look at history of gridiron dinner started in 188 5. The annual Event Features journalist, politicians and government officials. Following that the future of radio and Industry Trends including Digital Technology and the changing landscape of political talk shows. A group of reporters discuss their jobs covering white house and changing relationship between president ial administrations and press corps. Correspondents peter baker, jim avila of abc news, ap reporter josh leaderman and scores hor horseley participate in this national event. Pe t everyone else going back to work. Hae anof your i hope that doesnt make your competitive anxiety come in. Pan. Thank you for taking time out oh your news day to be part of thi conversation. This is scholarship panel, our 17 scholars in the front. They will get a chance to ask aj couple questions as we go along here. I hope this will be valuable for everybody in the room, even if a youve been covering the white e house from 10 yearss or 20 yea, theres always something to learn from your colleagues to da it well. Thats who is on the panel this year. Of the ill introduce them by name and let them tell stories, tricks of the trade. Im cohosting with carol lee, e Vice President of the sba. White house correspondent for wall street journal. Breaks a lot of news at the n. White house. She does domestic, foreign, we t chase her all the time. Its great to have her perspective on this panel, too. E immediately to my left is Josh Lederman. Jim avila works for abc news, my old colleague from chicago. He now covers white house for a abc. Scott horsely White House Correspondent. Peter baker correspondentve for New York Times and, of course, carol lee. Lets give them a hand. I really love the range of winners we have this year, ethe because when you put this group of four people together and looa at the way theyve covered the beat, they really show a diverse approach to covering the white house. Excell and each has excelled in a distinct way of doing their job. I want to start with josh yo lederman who does classic beat reporting on the secret service has everybody heard of the fence jumper. You ever heard of the fence jumperfo . Thats someone who climbs the fence and typically gets tackled before they make it over but one night that was not the case. Som and Josh Lederman was standing his post, at the ap booth. Why dont you pick it up from there . I think it was around 8 00 p. M. Or so. Most of the correspondents at the white house had already left for the evening, the news day was basically over. Ite even there were a handful of us from the wires and from a few of the Television Networks who were whw still in the building. We started to hear a commotion outside the doors of the press Briefing Room. A few of us ran outside to kind of see what was going on. It seemed from the flurry of activity with secret service that there was something going on. Now, those of us that are spend a decent amount of time at the white house know that lockdowns at the white house are relatively routine. Even fence jumpers happen, you know, three, four times a year t its an event, but not a not particularly remarkable one. Vel but there seemed to be something a level of alarm that the secret service was displaying that suggested that this may have t been a little bit something out of the ordinary. I headed into the press area ofw the white house, which is sort of at the entrance to the west wing for those of you who havent spent a lot of time there to try and, you know, figure out if i could figure out what was going on. And nobody had they said, no, everythings fine. We would have gotten an email some something happened. Nothings happened. Right about that Moment Secret Service agents stormed in from the west wing with these reallye large like, semi automatic weapons that, you know, youve seen the secret Service Carry a them around. R the counter tactical teams, sort of on the grounds of the , white house. Of on it was the first time id ever seen one of those out and sort of in shooting position inside the actual west wing. And they immediately pulled us s all, those of us who were in the press offices, down into the ts west wing and into the basement. So it ended up that i was down in the basement with most of the white house officials, you knowd obama Senior Advisor and his Communications Director who were also being evacuated first into the basement and then shortly thereafter outside into this ler middle ground between the entrance to the west wing and the Eisenhower Executive Office building. This was another one of the indications that something was happening that might have been a little different than the usualv fence jumper who hops over, the dogs nab him and its kind of end of story. Game over. My it was the fact they had e evacuated most of the white ho house. In my two and a half years at the white house i cannot had remember any time when there had been an evacuation of the white house. Ey wer and you could tell from the waye that they were the secret service was first trying to make sure any foreign nationals that had been in the building were out and escorted out to the street. T the just from their general behavior that there was something more to this story than what a usual fence jumper f how were you able you o posted something on the wire before midnight that night, how were you able to confirm something enough to start the wire reporting . The first report that i filed came, actually, from a uniformea secret Service Agent who was not supposed to be talking to the press but was sort of in this fray of people running around. And basically told us there was somebody that hopped the fence and thats what were dealing with. Bodynce so we moved from my phone i ph filed a quick story that hit the wire probably around 8 33 about that situation. Rvice the secret service went on lock down. They wouldnt talk to anyone. They told us they were scrambling people to come down to their headquarters to start dealing with this. They were getting their ducks in a row before they would talk to anyone. Ou around 10 00 p. M. They kicked us out of the white house as they nd do in the evenings. I relocated to my apartment and we continued to just hammer allt our sources to try and figure out what exactly had gone on. Llt and right around midnight we hd found out that yes, there had been a fence jumper, but not only that, but he had actually made it inside the white house e which was an unprecedented Security Breach that raised alli kinds of questions about whethen the security protocols that thea have to respond to fence jumpers is really adequate. We knew this was going to be a t big story. Ory. So we popped out an alert. Fro just around midnight. From there, started b building a breaking story, you d know, trying to wrap in both the details of what had happened and this one incident and sort of the broader implications for the secret service. You did some reporting by twitter that night, is that right. Sodeerid one of the problems was this was a friday evening very late, and there was no one around. Und. And the kind of flurry of reaction you would start getting unsolicited on a thursday et afternoon or something from members of congress and 30 Interest Groups that want quote in your stories were all asleep or drunk or at their parties or doing Something Else. Hing e i happened to notice a tweet from congressman Jason Chaffetz of utah who was going to be the incoming chairman of the house with jurisdictions over the secret service saying something about how alarming it was. Nd was i made contact with him through twitter only to find out he was on a plane flying home to his district and was not going to be landing until, you know, Something Like 3 00 a. M. Or oiv 4 00 a. M. D. C. Time. But was able to get him to agree to do an email interview over his using his in flight wireless while he was on the flight. So through that process we were able to learn that there had been another series of other Security Breaches that he had been investigating for more than a year, to be able to get that context and his reaction into al the story as well. That is shoe leather reporting in the digital age. I want to pause on that story right now. I just want to make this commene for the young journalists in the room. The this, to me, speaks volumes temt about importance of beat reporting at the white house. E e if the reporters hadnt been there the statement from the secret service would have been nothing to see here, dont worry about it. If josh hadnt been there on a regular basis and understood the pinpo of the white house and realized something really in important was happening and sorl of being able to pinpoint where it was happening, thats all part of the beat reporters tool kit. Lets pause there and go to a ho beat reporter who did somethingd totally different when the storr started to break about the warming relations between the u. S. And cuba. He reported at the white house but then he got on a plane. Tell us that story. This is about the release of allen gross who was a hostage in prison in cuba for five years. How it started is its really a combination of sources at the white house, sources in cuba. I have been covering cuba sincee the pope went back there in 1996 intermittently. Ere. I had sources there i was there during the elian crisis, too. I had sources there and worked them as well as working the work white house sources and also some sources in town who n w represented to allen gross as well. Hon i first started getting interested in the story because i wanted to interview allen gross. That was the impetus of it. Us o he was in prison i wanted to goi back to cuba. I thought it would be a good way to do it. Would be to try to get an interview with him. As i started making inquiries about that to the cuban government, they said, well, you know, we dont think thats going to happen. To allen says hes going to die atd the end of the year by starving himself to death. Were not really going to give him any interviews. So that was sort of the start. Then i went we found out who his attorney was, we started tn working him about can we get in there, get some video of him, can we do something. And we started getting hints from sources that something was in the works. That perhaps he would that neither cuba nor the united unid states wanted this man to die ie prison. Pr neither side did. Is but there was the issue was tha there were five cubans who werei in the United States in prison and three of them were still in prison, two of them had been hem released and the cubans wanted d Prisoner Exchange. E deba the United States didnt want to do a Prisoner Exchange. They were debating about it,g e they were talking about it. I started working my white house sources. And trying to find out what stage they were in. At first it was just sort of well the word i remember clearly was a very high up source in the National Security council telling me that me that something was percolating. And and that was about two months before the release, i think it was. And its interesting where this happened, too. I will say that one of the things that we are getting away from or the networks especially and i think some magazines and newspapers as well trying to get away from is traveling with thed president all the time. And but one of the we keep pushing back to our bosses pushn about, at least the network rk level, is that yes, there may not be huge stories that were s going to break on these trips with the president when he goese places but we have unusual my access during my colleagues know that. We have unusual access to the people who normally had may not return your call when youre in washington. Youre but when youre in china or youre in burma or youre in hawaii for two weeks with the president , theres a lot of time to talk informally with people who are your sources. Hig and it was on one of these trip. Where a very high up person told me before the end of the year. A so we had we sort of knew we worked, focused on that. All this time we werent doing any stories about it. A this was all ground work. Nditio we didnt do any stories about what was happening, an occasional piece on how alan aie gross was, what his physical condition was. G to we didnt do an occasional piece how allen gross was and what his physical condition was. In general we werent doing stories every day on it. I was going about my other work. Then we actually nailed down th week it was going to happen. When i nailed down the week it was going to happen from a a source not at the white house, i went to the white house. N youus and i said, look, im about to report this. My is that going to this was an interesting question for you guys to talk about as students about how, you know, my colleagues as well. We went to the white house and i said this is what i have. I know its going to happen this week before he goes on his let vacation. If i reportack this, is that g to jeopardize alan grosss life because he had threatened to kill himself if he didnt get released. If the white house said, well, let me get back to you. Ou they did, to their credit they did get back to me. They said, okay, you have it. It is going to happen on that day. Heres the deal. C if you dont if you wait, and well you can report it first, and then well verify it with everybody else afterwards, immediately afterwards. S as soon as he wheels up and out of cuban airspace, and therefore hes safe. Cal and so my producer and i who ist here, flew to miami, and waited for a call from josh earnest. And i was in front of a live camera, i got a call from josh earnest and we went with the story and broke it on good morning america. T part of the deal also was that our anchor, david muir would get an interview with president obama about the this was not just about Prisoner Exchange but was in fact the beginning of a new era of relations between oub two countries and david muir was able to sit down with president obama and talk with him about that. I went on from miami to cuba and reported that evening on the evening news about the reaction cuba. I would highlight one point he made in all that. Which is an incredible story. That is he did not get his very solid information from inside the white house. That is most often the case, the best stuff comes not from them. And, you know, you so often you have something from somewhere else and then you go to them. If they want to play ball, which they clearly did with you, then they will. If not, then you have a choice e to make to do your own story either way. The question for you is, if you did they make his life is neb threatened case to you, or did they say, no, but if you wait, well do this . Sation the case they made was if wea were to what they were concerned about, i have to be careful a little bit because some of it is off the record conversations. E wa in general what the white house was concerned about was inflaming miami before it happened. Me and in some way, that would cause some kind of incident that would stop the negotiations. And, therefore, indirectly put alan grossed life in jeopardy,ry because he had threatened his own life at the end of the year. This was december 17th. This was getting close to the end of the year. W,foul u so they made that they didn foul up the negotiations. There wasnt any and they sna made it clear, there is nobody i right nows who is anywhere nea as close to the story as you are. It is not going to break somewhere else. If you are patient, youll have a much better story. We wont jeopardize the mans life. So we decided we had a good th t clean kill andha we might as we just stay with that. Source how do you develop a source like that whom who will tell you at the critical moment it is percolating and have enough knowledge of that persons workings to know that you would trust them and read them correctly . Well part of it is who they r are. In the this person was involved in the negotiations. So if you know that if you tk know that somebody has that kind of direct this was not a third party. This was not someone in the proh office. This was not a secretary or Something Like that. This was an individual who was directly involved. Im so, and how do we get to know them, we get to know them by being there and going on these trips. And you have to say too, and each one of us works for on this panel works for a distinguished organization. It isrily not necessarily the reporter in general, it is alsoh because ofip our audience and o, readership. We have to w h you work for organization that has some infl influence and that does help. I mean a. P. , i dont have to tell everybody what everybody does here. But every one on this panel hav influential viewers and we havee massive viewers as opposed to the New York Times or listening to npr, but we have 10 million or 12 Million Viewers that evening. And so whend they want to talk they want to talk to us. So that is one of the ways. W to i want to go now to scott h, hoarsely. Everybody listens to npr. I love scotts reports and i hv love his voice because when i tune in hes chosen something s. Complicated and he will explain it to me in a way that will make sense. My favorite c is the pension smoothing, the concept of pension smoonling by smoothing by comparing it to a pension smoothy. And i think there was a blender in the audio somewhere. Co but scott, could you talk aboutt how you approach the story, what stories you choose and what you are looking foric at the white house and your general approach is. And the same i as anybody he on the panel does, you get goodd information and try to get good sources. But the twist with radio, we dont have the advantage of y pictures so we try to bring sound into stories, whether it is the blender of the smoothy or anything else. And sound is the one thing thato the white house thinks not at ue all about. Not i dont know how many times weve been on the road with the president and they will have hor choreographed an absolutely beautiful picture at the golden hour, hes standing in front of a a Colonial Building in nial cartagena and the sun is just sinking to the right angle and it is gorgeous and they say everybody, lets go, head for the vans and just then the ht ae childrens choir comes out and you hear them as we aredren walking well that would haves been nice. Campai or on the campaign trail, the president was loved to visit factories and they would shut the factory down, Assembly Line so he could go through and taker a tour and there was no sound. It was the industrial hum. And at one point i complained t someone on the advanced team, i would be nice to hear what a factory sounds like. So they took us to a a spaghetti sauce bottling plant,b and i learned why they should down the Assembly Line because everybody crowded around to get their picture taken with the pir president and it was like lucille ball, each little piece of cardboard got caught in the conveyer belt. Okay. We couldnt use that sound any w way. K is to so part of the trick is to thini about sound to make the starty o co story come alive. Ki it might be a blender, kids singing. On our recent trip we stopped ia jamaica ton meet with the cubam leaderus and the first thing th president did was go to the bob marley museum. They only let in still es of photographers. So there is great pictures of n. The president looking at the old bob marley albums but it was frustrating from me, because you could hear ever so astronautly one love playing and which ryn would have been nice for our story in kingston. And scott emailed me and whend thee there is access, members of the board light up and we are communicating about problems and im back advocating to the white house and he told me this t soundtrack to a huge kings confligration in kingston was one love by bob marley. What mix are you looking for ino the white house. You do journalism and break news and do the story of the day. Are you looking for a particulan mix in your beat reporting . I think we obviously try to report the news of the day. Oe we want to be there was a time when npr saw it suppose as a supplementary news source. They are getting everything in g the local paper and we are something different, the next a day analysis and the old joke s was do the news a day late and call it an analysis. But for better or r beworse, fo many people we are not a secondary source, were a anymor primary news source. So we feel compelled to actually just keep up with the same days news. But often times what differentiates us is our our explanatory journalism or our context. And you mentioned joshs you c experience. After s 2 1 2 years you can say this is something unusual and t peter can say even with greatert perspective, this ishi preced unprecedented or this is not at all unprecedented, that is s hp exactly what happened in three or four previous administrations. I think one of the thingss we y to bring to the beat is some te sense of context or history. Is some sense when the president i being pressed to respond to thih ferguson, well, this is something that has dogged the to president from skip gates, to bring some of the history to ear bear. That is a greatan transitiono peter baker of the New York Times who has covered three g of president s in three different eras. In fact, i tn the past year, ha written about the obama white house, the clinton candidacy and the bush family attempt to build a dynasty. So talk about the changes youv seen. How does covering this administration compare to the o others youve covered . That is a great question. And scott is right, in some ways, there is nothing new under the sun, right. Every white house comes into office thinking we just ice reinvented the wheel here and we are going to do it differently b than anybodyod else and were hm stuff because we just won a National Campaign and they are hot stuff because they did u something extraordinary because they convinced a majority or at least enough americans to give them their votes to send them p. Into power. So they come in and they are certain they are going to do it in a way not done before and rs particularly the first years or two years of the administration you hear a lot of first times and never befores. And then mark knows and steve and wherever, steve skully, different people. Th now it is edifferent. Ies the modalities are different. It is twitter and meercat. He looks at me. Because your young and kip. I dont know what that is. C at it is a little animal. That is what i thought. So some as pektss of it did aspects of it are different. That is about tactics and use st modalities and not the broader theme. And as you watch the white house wo struggle with the second term, it feels familiar as when you sm see clinton or bush struggle as with their second term. Syria is not the same thing as h an impeachment and so each is different but the Broad Strokes and the different currents of politics and governance are familiar. And so as scott said, it is its great to keep that in mind, whet we do our reporting and to tryod to help listeners and viewers to try to understand the per n a l sbektive perspective of what is going on. That makes it fun in sort of ways. And so you have the the historical, what other president s have bon perspectiveh and i what how do you maintain what others envy which is a fresh eye and new take and how do you work that into your d reporting. That is a great question. Because i do struggle and wake t up and say that is not a story. Weve done it before and heard it before and somebody else manages to, in fact, take whatever it is and find the fresh aspect of it. And bring the new eyes to it. And i kick myself for being too fuddy duddy. And i think we all have partners. We al i have to great partners in mike share and julie davis who are it seasoned veterans but also bring a freshness to it. S to h and so thatav helps to have perspective and to bring rength different strengths to a team like that. And then i read about it in the wall streets and feel like an i idiot for notze recognizing the Great Potential for one story. Can i just say one thing i i . Thought about when i knew i was going to do this panel, as radio reporters we get the benefit of the print pull reports. Prin where the one print reporter isw assigned to do each day to write up what the president does. And when christi or peter or pt carol do president dudy and all could easily phone it in, they never phone it in. The pool reports are so thorough, so detailed. Detaile even on a completely throwaway trip. And i think the one lesson of that is you never know what is throwaway six weeks later. Se you never know when some s seemingly meaningless venture lk detail trip to cleveland will take on added resonance two months down the road. Y and and because they Pay Attention and dont phone it in, six gful months down the road when it is meaningful, they have it. And that is the concept of the pool. And you know how the pool worksi and we spend time fighting for n the access w of the pool. When we cant get in the whole e press corp, we send in a group of 13 people when we are traveling and 21 when we are inr the white house to gather in t information and the first responsibility is to share it an with the rest of usd and the se people who use the platform, th print poolers sharing our th reporting with everybody else i america before we write our own story based on it. Because it is a big responsibility and we feel likee the public has a right to know and that is a Public Service ice that we perform. So i want to ask the panel, eop peter, i cant help but notice t you haveio some documentation sitting over there that may help to answer this question. But what are the big challenges for you, in covering the white house, and how do you overcome them . Not that im hyping up rivalb publication, but i have some interest in this article in politico and they did do annu something for the white house ht correspondents. And if you havent r read loo ie a look. They got about 70 of us to respond this year, as to the previous number and they do askt a lot of questions. And some are surprising and some arent. Those of us who have asked, ama be covered otherin presidencies, w has the most friendly, barack obama the most friendly and least friendly, partly because y were in the middle of it and t upset with them andwe glossed or the frustration with bush and clinton. But that is part of the relationship that goes with that. Another finding that i thought e was interesting is how many times do youhow ask the presid yourself at a press conference andco 63 said never. How many times did you interview the president as yourself or th part of ane organization and 8 of the colleagues say never. Andto to me, that is a shame. To me the most telling one is how often have you interviewed somebody in the last week from the white house who isnt paid to talk to you. Id not a press staffer and 58 of the colleagues said never. In the last week. And, y okay, we dont all get a chance to ask the president a question at a press conference or get a chance to interview them as a often as we like but we could talk to people that go beyond the press staff and three out of five of us havent been able toe get past that wall in the last n week. And that tellst th us somethingu about the nature of the white house. I think if you talk to your colleagues here who have done it longer than i have, you hear lla stories about how under the busm 41 and otheror administrations, they had contact with senior people beyond the press office. N and ive seen in three administrations how that has shrunken slowly and surely withu each passing one. Assing so what do you do as a white en be e correspondent. T . You have to be there like josh, all of the time, to recognize opportunities, to take that g sr knowledge and translate it into big stories and use sources ba outside of the white house to come backho to the white house we did can cuba and we heard about cuba right here and pushed them to answer our questions kn whenyo they wont volunteer it. , you have to be listening literally for sound and take al of those experiences and not count on the white house officials to necessarily hand. Things over because they are not going to do that. Sorry, go ahead. I wanted to ask a different question. Go for it. Th one of the things that has come up a lot is with the ability for the white house to now go to twitter and facebook and interview with you tube an stars and local news anchors at the white house and a whole host of folks who are if you look at the president interviews, hev largely does them mostly with people who are not in the whitem house covering him on a day to s day basis and are very familiar with his policies and where hed been and might be a going and af of that. They are parachuting in and do an interview and parachute out. And so does being a White House Correspondent matter and i wouls put that question to you guys. Does it matter and why does it matter and if people can get re information from elsewhere, what is the difference . I think you need it all. I dont think it hurts to have outside people come in and ask questions. We have we are in a bubble. We have to recognize that. Where we live, where we work. I know you do and i know most many of us do. We try to get out of that. I im lucky in a have a partner as well to does most of the junk and carl does most of the daytoday. I go in and i try to work out side of that box. I cant blame the white house tg for wanting to get outside of that room and to because wheo i do, when i go to denver, when iwhen go to seattle, they are n talking about the same things we are talking about. They are not focused on that. They are not focused on the intricacies that we are. And i think where we see that th most, carol, is at the white house briefing. Too often the quest, in my opinion, has been to get an t argument going, to get some kind of conflict and there are very few questions or not enough quei questions, let me put it that a way, that are asked to illicit , information. Owups yes, the followups have to be more combative because the information isnt forthcoming ht but the firsthe original questi is to pick a fight rather than to seek some information. And i think people outside of the beltway when i visit that are tired of that, it is part of the noise. And they want the kind of questions that we sometimes hear. When the local news people come in from out of town and outside of the Briefing Room andth they ask something about it and we chuckle at it but the viewers back in denver care about it. Inn i think we needve the occasiona baseball stuff on occasion. But i think they are wise to go outside of us, myself. Hink i think you are right about some of the combativeness. It struck me during the v. A. Hospital scandal, the v. A. Has been a mess for years through the democrat and republican uldi administrations and i think thea people would like to see the v. A. Hospital system work bette than it does and i think there is to reason that has to be a political scandal. I dont know why eric shinsekis scout became the story as to opposed to what it will take too fix the hospital system. Out, once shinseki was out, we in tht white house briefing, lost an interest in the story and the administration lost focus on it too. Sayin i do think there isg something what you are saying about the ee combative tone about the washingtonsent rick news media. My colleague would say if you get to a story and there is a nd whole bunch of reporters alreadh there, go find a different advie story. T n which is good advice generally but not applicable to what we do. It is it pretty rare, unless yp get a good scoop on cuba, it is pretty rare that you will realle be in a whole different playingy field than dozens of talented colleagues on this beat. But when you do, those are the most important moments. I think were all intimately and painfully aware that were no longer the only game in town. And there is nobody up here sitting here from medium or all of these tumbler or other ways people are getting their information. Created some issuesdia not only with outside media coming in but the white house e bypassing the media and going tothroug people through their own media channels. Butthin you think the aspect thi maintain as beat reporters at the white house is the accountability function and that is one that is not that people that parachute in for a story are not in a good position to really do. At the it is that one phrase theyve been using for a month and suddenly it disappears and you notice it becauseve b youve be hearing it every day and it turns out there is a policy change underneath that. Issu or the issue that you press deeper, and like, jim, you break a major important story or uncover some type of shenanigans that are not likely to be uncovered by someone who is coming in because the white house is trying to reach a different segment of the population. Lly i dont personally objec the white house running an offense. Its i think they can it is up to them to craft their message and try to explain their policies and beliefs in a way that is rey persuasive. And if they want to speak to the American Public by whatever medium is available to them, i dont object to that at all. My concern is that they not go r aroundsa the independent free a, adversarial press corp which is at the white house every day and has the situational awareness. Ow i like vice and media and pick e your acronym. I like them all. More voices is better. But we need information to workt with. That mix and i feel like the beat reporters are a critical part of that mix. So now weve got about 20 in minutes left to take some questions. Im looking outg nn at the scholarship winners and ill start with you. And you mentioned medium and that came up a lot and the clinton camp used that yesterday to respond. Do you think that because i know there has been an uptick si with the Obama Administration usingon social media and other g ways of getting information out a lot and weve talked about a lot and is that a precedent were going to see Going Forward or something specific to this , administration . T imagine that the next administration will do any less. Theyll probably have even more tools, i would imagine, to side step the free and adversarial y. Press, is that what you said. Yes. In alphabeticalelng order. And part of fighting is being vigilant because it is something i probably havent heard of yete whatever the next invention is next. And josh carney said when we challenged him about this one time he said, look, any administration would do this if they have the tools we have. To argue with ols we h that. I think what you hit on though is that it is fine for them to do to define and fine all of these other things if they were doing that and not answering a Daily Briefing or e not making the president available which he has been recently very available as far as press conferences are rash concerned. Nferen a unique rash of press conferences lately. And then that would be an issue i think. But as long as they want to put out an unfiltered message, first of all the audiences are smart enough to know that is an unfiltered message. They really are. We have to give our audience bu some credit. That is fine. Th but if they did that and then jo the president sh or josh didnt come out and sit if front of us, to me that would be an issue. Itn i dont find it an issue as long as they continue to do that. I think there is an issue with , what peter was saying was they. Do not make people outside of tt the press office available. That can be a problem. I have to say, i would doubt that you have that problem. And i dont really have that rsd problem. But i understand that smaller, perhaps smaller and that is what i was talking about our organizations that we work for, smaller organizations i think or maybe smaller and perhaps fox wa news and some other, that they deem as combative might have ann issue but i dont. I think different organizations are going to get different responses, that is he true. Butoble we have the same proble, actually. And mostly how things have ngs a changed over time. I was seeing tom defranco here earlier thinking when he covered the days when he covered the ford on the plane talking to him all of thewe time. When jim baker was chief of staff, every day at the end of the day, he called back st reporters. Day i cant remember the last time t Denis Mcdonough t made a call a the end of the day to reporters. Im not criticizing him. But i think the culture has peop changed. And the people involved in the t Decision Making are less re les available and more removed and more separated from us by a pait staff that is paid to get between us. I remember reading one of liz warrens great pieces in the nen yorker and he said i wondered ey down to the nfc offices. Yeah. With an escort. Wellt. Imagine that. Just wandering around the west wing. And that is something the younger unlike congress, youl can walkk around congress and k find 535 sources willing to talk to you. Begging to talk to you. And at the white house, you are notno able to go very far. You are restricted to a tiny si, space. The isvestibule. And that is why josh and jo scott and the ones that spend he all day there are heros in my mind because this is cramped and you cannot wander the halls and sit there and knock on a door and say, hey, guys, what is an going on. s [ inaudible ]. Yeah. Like in the d. O. D. , the reporters there tell you have the ability to walk around and that is true at state. And that is a shame. Te. Because fewer nonscripted spontaneous conversations lead to understanding and clarity. Did you have a question . I did have a question. Ve a qe earlier in the round table discussion, you spoke about the leverage journalists have free range journalists have oveb the white house where they can l produce a story through social media with a twitter handle and say this s happened and we are o wondering did this really happe and what leverage do we have to tell our story to the viewers. Lo we can reach tens of millions of viewers at the same time so why not come to us . I think historically we had more leverage. Because any administration that would have to be responsive to voters, even if they didnt like the press, had to deal with us i to get their message out. That is still true. I think the public still does distinguish what they read in the New York Times or see on abc from what comes out in the n west wing week on the white th house website. E i hope they do. But that leverage is less than it used to be. E because they do have more withou avenues to distribute their message without us. Kno i think in the old days, like it or eynot, they had to deal with us. That is less truehat than it u to be. And i was in on the conversation you were talking about. But the leverage is we represent millions of leaders and away. Listeners and viewers and that is hard to turn away. S and they dont like having the photos described as when staterun media. And so when we go public with our complaints, and we do it in a united way, which we dont doy very often but occasionally whee they really tick us off, they really do and that gets the ot president s attention and it rew trickles down. And even every day we are i there publishing increasing ire and anxiety and we do and that is often effective because of ef the leverage we do t have. Yes. You mentioned, scott, that there is now this army of paid i staffers that are there to get between you as correspondents and the folks actually making policy. Re i think i read somewhere in washington in the last 30 yearsh there has beener like a threefold or 300 increase in the number of p. R. People ass the number of journalists has gone down and im wondering, c they create kind of these pseudo events and try to set the agend, for the day and that is their job an d im wondering, how do you find Something Else there, something unique there . We pretty much ignore it. I have to say we ignore the staged events, when he goes to different places, because he wants to announce a new thing os trade and so he goes to a port. I cant remember the last time we did a story about whatever the agenda for the day is. Television news doesnt really work that way. We go in case something unusual happens at that unevent. But we dont cover that event. Anddo what we try to do, what ii try to do, and i speak for myself in this, is focus on things that im interested in, that i think our viewers are w interested in, and not worry about their agenda, about the io white house agenda and come from the outside in. H f come with information. But they cant ignore. Because they know that my 10 Million Viewers at 6 30 are going to see this information. Th they needey to get their spin o it and get their information ou about that particular issue. I rarely report from the inside out. Inside i think that is whato i would n say. What they are doing is no different. The guy that flew the gyrocopter into the capitol, if he just delivered 535 letters about refm reform, that wouldnt have led the abc news that night. Everybody has done stunts. Commun and communication staffing in a congress, there is a political scientist at the university of maryland, francis lee, either lee francis or francis lee, but shes tracked the change in how many congressional staffers primary message is messaging ana communications ass opposed to legislating. And it is remarkable. Able. I bet the change there is even bigger than at the white house. I guess i dont have as big e of a problem with the press dealing with press folks. I think if they are empowered, it depends, particularly in the white house, onf, how the top staff, the senior advisers, then press secretary, depending on e who it is,op decides to empower people on their staff. Th and there is instances where those folks are given say tremendous amount of leeway to share information, they are in e the meetings, they understand o what iins going on and it is woh talking to them and there are n times when it is not worth al talking to theml at all because they know nothing, if they do, they are not going to tell you e because they are afraid of thei ownsh shadow and not empowered n any meaningful way and so they m are not useful. And the same goes through the el hill. And ill give you an example i the white house. Is ben rhodes, his title is the strategic director for the nsc so he is probably the closest Foreign Policy adviser that the president has. [ inaudible ]. And if there isiden somethinn be known, he probably knows it. I dont mean to disparage press people, because the good p ones are great. They are knowledgeable and in th the meetings. They my point is they shouldnt shield us from othersw as well. No, not at all. And that is whati th i mean. And increasingly they are just u there to block people from talking to us as opposed to them having information to talk to us and then being facilitators to or a lot of times youllfa call a senior official not in the press staff and get a call back from the press staff, which is always and that is a designed system and im sure there are stars handed out to e whatever seniorni folks do that and at the agencies too. He yeah, at the agencies in s general. But you know there was some some chuckles i think this week when the president burned a whole loted of jet fu and flew down to the everglades to celebrate earth day and talk. About it. But the fact of the matter is, c the back drop of the everglades got that story in every newspaper, with the photograph e of him on the walkway over the swamp. Thats how you get your message out. The events can go to they put on but you dont have u to see what they want you to to see. Like i think josh made the poing earlier, when they are changingn the lexicon within the white house, it is reflective of olicy changing policy or view point, those are things that are hard t to hide if your paying close e attention. But i think to your question about the tension between letting them set the agenda and setting your own agenda, there is a story they want us to write every single day. Will g we all will get emails, six or seven, 8 00 p. M. With some e all embargoed things tomorrow morning and were to get excite about a t Progress Report on nothing, d, u basically. And i think were in a unique position as a wire service in that we do have to kind of cover everything. Because even if their Progress Report on the audio industry is not that interesting to most ofp the readers, the Detroit Free Press is a member and they wante to read about that stuff. Conver but we have conversations you throughout the day, every singlb day, about how much does this t merit. This thing they are trying to o, make a big deal out of it, can e we do a little blurb on that and dispense of it and focus on whae we think is important today ande vice versa. What abo what about the thing they mentioned and tried to brush n under the rug. Actu no, that is the newsal today. We were going to make a big deal n outg of that and kind of briefl dispense with this thing that they are trying to focus on. So we have to do both instead of making a choice between one or the other. I typed the word embargo into Google Translate the other day and it came back no news. It it is their way of making out Something Big is happening. T if it was big news they would not give it to anybody on embargo. Certainly not a wide audience oe tens of thousands of people they are emailing to. That is not secret stuff. There was a story in usa today about the growing use of fact sheets by the white house and i confess i only saw a n summary of the story. So im not sure if the story carried the theme. E but the suggestion was that thea were using fact sheets as a proxy for executive action. Cutie and our rule of thumb is the longer the fact sheet, the less they are actually doing. The cuba fact sheet, a couple of paragraphs. Progress report on fuel efficiency and the automobile, 14 pages. There is usually a section in it called building on progress weve already done. Which is just a long summary of things theyve already done. I think we have time for one more question and then im going to ezra. Okay. Cool. So i think most of you have expressed support of the increasing diversity of voices in the news world. And i guess my question is with that diversity of voices and with so many faces on the landscape and covering the white house and d. C. As a whole, for those people, who maybe dont have the clout of the New York Times ocr abc or a bigger know organization, how do you navigate reporting on the whiter house or r reporting in d. C. . And on top of that, how do you e cultivate the sources that manyu of the sources come to you not s necessarily because of the quality of theand reporting bur because of the audience and the viewership you bring with you. I started on the beat with politico which is not a Small News Organization but it is notr the New York Times or the ll r wall street journal which is who work for now or abc or npr. And i was also very lowlevel o, the team of god, i think it was like ten at that time. I think it could have been more. And i made it my job to be there every single day. D do e and do every little scrap of a t trip that nobody wanted to do, and be trying to stick my head over the pack and just get in the mix, as much as i can anu talk to as many people as i and could. I,kno and i didnt have a family or ai anything andng so i spent a lott time not at home and out and meeting people. And just getting sources set up and then you develop relationships in that way. And then when youre three or four years or covering it or a year or six months, someone is willing to talk to you, not because you work for the splasho News Organization they want to y engage with because youve beenu around and they know you. I so they talk to you. Is the other way is to find a stort that you want to do and or a topic that you really like, and. In there and pitch stories and that is how you get in front of people who are behind the press operation. At and that is hows you get into their offices, typically, if you are not working for a big News Organization. And also justanck sitting back noticing stuff. The president , when i was on the lower level of the white house team, there was obviously the ig senior people were doing the big story of the day and that was. Not left to me. Ld d and so i would do things like le oh, the president is giving a sixminute speech on abe lincoln and which is at the capital and he had to bring his teleprompteh and he took it everywhere he went. And that is something that the folks who were writing story ofo the day werent necessarily r. Keeping an eye out for. And then you start you startt writing stories that get noticed and the white house folks you an realize they need to deal with you and talk to you and it builds on from there. Lso also the news world knows wh is leading on a story, who is o. The cuttingedge of a story. Lot im looking around this room ano i see people who work for organizations not as big as my colleagues but the leaders they are leaders on a particula story and so the white house decides it has to deal with those people on that subject matter. Andt then it doesnt matter how big they are. F you if you know what you are talkint about and if you are the person who knows the most, people will talk to you. Right. I think step one is re are acknowledging there are certainm limitations jim talked about the cache that the news i was organizations have. Before i was in this job, i worked for the hill, which is at the bottom of the totem pole inn terms of News Organizations in o this town. Real and the only way to make any headway at that level i think ia to be smarter than the people who are too rushed with their daily deadlines, covering the beat, to be able to do the t, connect the dots between here is three things obama is doing, do hold on, there is some overlap. There. S so it is enterprise. It is not going to be an announ announcement that because know, frankly if a lot of what we do, a lot of the news that comes ouh of the white house iso give i choreographed and they wont dos that to give it to a small news outlet unless it is a specific v niche issue. So you have to show that your analytical skills an the ability to provide the context and analysis for your readers gives you the ability to do a ry compelling story despite that c lack of access that some of the. Organizations have. And as carol was saying, there it builds on itself. People start noticing. That person at that little outlet is doing great stuff, we should talk to him about this orhe they will have an interesting take on this or that and the intricacies of the issue and it starts to build. Let me talk about how you get from a small place to a big place. Be patient a little bit. It is not bad. I covered chicago city hall, that is where i learned how to be a political reporter. And it was amazing. I covered jane burn, harold r washington, rich dally. I covered grab you by the lapels politics. Go do that. The first thing i would recommend, just talking to theui students, is not go to the whitn house tomorrow and start writing small stories and try to get in. Go to springfield, illinois. Go to some big city or even a small city and cover the city pe council meetings. You will learn when people are lying to you. You will learn who to trust and how to make sources. You learn how to shmuse. So my biggest advice is to go someplace small. I should say i started out that that way too. Proba i think most of us probably did in florida as covering the annual fireworks story or wh whatever. There is something to be sa for making a lot of mistakes, which you will do. Somewhere else. S on a stage that is a little smaller than the white house. I agree with everything g. Everybody said up here. And i want to add one thor es more thing. E the bestme. Stories were never ones the white house gave me. Never. Mes and they dont give me as many stories as they give us, like typical mythology yeah. I wish it were true. We would like to audit it f too. Him at the wall street journal were the one eus from e other day. The best stories are not with e the president. I dont remember any interview with the president that broke ae big news. The stories are big are the one that you develop from yourself, coming from the outside in, because you have a good ear and paying attention andfr working from the ground up, those are n the best stories and not the things they give out and so dont worryin about that becausa it is not important. With that, i think weve run out of time. And l and so i want to thank you for your Great Questions ab lets tha and lets thank our panel. [ applause ] tonight on cspan 3, it is American History tv in prime time with our series american artifacts. First we go inside sent lamar