woodward's depiction over deep throat. is that fair after all these years? rupert murdock drawing a major rebuke from a british parliamentary committee. >> rupert murdock unfit -- the damning indictment from the mp's report into phone hacking. how will this impact his media empire on both sides of the atlantic? and dan rather still at war with cbs. >> we reported the truth, and that is that president bush, later president bush, when he was in national guard service, he was at least awol. >> the ex-anchor still insisting that his story, based on unproven documents was accurate, despite the fact that cbs apologized and retracted the report. i'm howard kurtz, and this is "reliable sources." it was inevitable that news organizations would mark and to be honest celebrate the one-year anniversary of osama bin laden's death, and it's hardly shocking that the obama white house would push that storyline. the president's campaign posted a web ad suggesting that mitt romney might not have made the same choice to go after bin laden. commentators, and even a few on the left recoiled in horror. sdhoo is there mr. obama ebbing metro detroiting the death of osama bin laden for political purposes? >> to run a campaign ad is one of the most despicable things you can do. >> after telling the country you don't spike the football, you come off as a hypocrite when you then go out of your way to spike the football. >> the obama camp has decided to be aggressive on national security and keep telling the story. they are putting the presses's record out in front and it's working. >> republican challenger disputed the notion that the president made a gutsy call to send special ops forces after the world's top terrorist. >> even jimmy carter would have given that order. >> now, that media debate was interrupted when obama made a surprise visit to afghanistan and delivered a primetime television address, but that hardly silenced the critics. >> one year ago from base here in afghanistan our troops launched the operation that killed osama bin laden. the goal that i set to defeat al qaeda and deny it a chance to rebuild is now within our reach. >> for the past several days president obama and his re-election spin machine, well, they've been taking a victory lap, glossing over who the real heroes are. >> so have the media been even handed in covering the sniping on al qaeda and afghanistan? joining us now in new york, christa freeland, editor of thompson reuters digital, and here in washington dana millbank, columnist for the washington post, and johna goldberg, editor of national review on-line, a fox news contributor and author of the new book "the tierney of clash yeas." how criminals cheat. why have the media made such an issue about how it was unseemly for president obama to trump et the fact that he approved the mission that killed osama bin laden. >> i guess because we love issues and we love political fights. you asked earlier, howard, was this a phony war? i think it absolutely is. i mean, there is an election campaign going on. this is absolutely a reasonable thing for the president to brag about, and let's remember that democrats very, very often are accused of being weak on national security, so i think fair enough for him to say, look, i'm not, and this president in particular is someone whose ability to make these kinds of calls were questioned. remember, hillary clinton in the 3:00 a.m. ad. i think that this is fair, and, you know, the republicans are complaining because, you know, this is the president showing that he is strong in what is traditionally their territory. >> as everyone recalls, george w. bush put on a flight suit and landed on an aircraft carrier when he thought the iraq war was over. some of your fellow conservatives are now feigning that obama is touting his record, and even if he is greg bragging, what's wrong with that? >> i think the way you are framing it is exactly wrong and exactly the way the mainstream media has been framing it, which is that i don't remember there was a lot of complaining simply about the -- i mean, there's a lot of eye rolling and grumble, but there wasn't a lot of the serious complaining about obama trying to take some credit and celebrating the fact that he did this. the complaining really started where in that ad you have obama saying mitt romney wouldn't have done this, which is a completely unfalsifiable charge based on a quote out of context. >> well, out of context. let's give people the quote in 2007. romney said it's not worth moving heaven and earth and spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person, meaning osama. >> then he followed up and said of course you take your shot at bin laden if you had it, but don't design the war on terror just to get one man, or you wouldn't fight world war ii to get hitler. >> dana might agree with you because you wrote, dana, that the obama ad was sleazy. of course, here's the new york post with a ka-bull headline saying he spikes the bin laden football. should the press hold obama to a higher standard than bush was when he was running quite explicitly on the war on terror? >> i think the press should be consistent, and i think in large part we have this time. i don't think anybody begrudges -- well, johna may, but most people don't begrudge the president making a trip to afghanistan. i don't think we should call it a surprise trip. i think the fcc should fine people when they say surprise because it's not really a surprise. it's unplanned. >> i didn't know about it. >> it's not a sprisz when the president shows up in iraq or afghanistan. if he showed up in iran, that might be a surprise. i think to go further and say when this president puts out an ad like that, it's similar. maybe not to the same degree, but it's similar if we were whacking george bush about it for all these years. i for one would not feel consistent and fair if i didn't point out whether he is doing that or whether he is doing the excessive fundraising that we also whacked president bush for. >> i think the mission accomplished thing is a perfectly legitimate thing to beat up on george w. bush about. that was overdone. there's another sort of kibt si problem here. john kerry was running as sort of the anti-war guy in 2004. there was a sharp policy difference. there is no sharp policy difference, at least rhetorically. it's not like mitt romney is the anti-war guy in this contest, and the way they're framing it, it makes it sound as if there is this -- they're trying to manufacture a policy difference. mitt romney supports going after bin laden. we know that. every republican in the republican party supported going after bin laden. >> one of the things that the president does get attacked on, and i think actually quite rightly when it comes to some of the economic policy decisions, is that he is not a leader. that he is not an executive. that he is not able to take tough decisions. i think to this kind of point of character, it's fair enough for him to say, look, one of the toughest decisions, i took it. the thing that really bothers me about this whole debate that we're having is where i think that we are giving the president a pass and we really shouldn't is actually on afghanistan. it's not about did he kill bin laden or not and is it okay to brag about that. it's about what is going to happen in afghanistan, and that is the real issue, and the real acuna right now in foreign policy. >> let me jump in now. i want to turn this back into the media coverage and brian williams of nbc bringing his cameras into the situation room at the white house. it's never been done before. for this how far-long special on rock center in which williams got into the obama, biden, hillary, and others about this very subject. let's roll a clip from that show. >> here it is. there you are. >> here i am sitting right here. >> that is an intense look on your face, and everyone is intently watching that screen. >> this is -- if i'm not mistaken, pete, this picture was taken right as the helicopter was having some problems, but you may not remember. >> i can't say. >> that's what it feels like because i remember hillary putting her hand over her mouth at that point. >> this was a story the administration obviously very much wanted told and gave abc the access. do you think that program was too soft? zi think it was celebrate other. it's also a fascinating story. i don't blame nbc news if they get a chance to do this that they're going to this documentary about it. >> the situation room in the white house, and it's not just wolf blitzer's set, so i think it was useful to remind them that there was the original. >> there's branding going on. >> i mean, look, the president is entitled to, we're going to do those one-year answer versery things anyway. he is entitled to benefit from that to some extent. this election is not going to be about foreign policy anyway. i mean, it may give him some marginal advantage, and, sure, let people holler that they've been too soft. >> you talked earlier about the president and afghanistan, so the trip -- i have to call it an unannounced trip arks dorgd dana, that he was there for a few hours and gave the speech. was that covered by the media as a serious foreign policy visit, or a political victory lap? >> political victory lap. and that is where i do think that we are falling short, and it's a danger because the u.s. election is hugely, hugely important. it's the dominant story here, but other things are happening in the world. afghanistan is going to exist after the election, and that's really where i think we need to be thinking and talking about because it's far from clear to me that things and actions that make sense in the election campaign when it comes to talking about afghanistan are actually going to make sense on the ground the day after the election. >> it was something of a political stunt in that the president's trip was tied to the exact one-year anniversary of the bin laden death, but he did sign the agreement with hamid karzai for the u.s. withdrawal or transition and so to some extent didn't that force the press to play it straight? >> it forced -- it gave the press a second paragraph to write about the story. there was some substance there, but really the agreement was an agreement to have an agreement about an agreement, as far as i can tell. i also want to put one more factoid into all of this. this is not the first time the obama administration has tried to politicize and get political gain and domestic politics from the killing of bin laden. last year in may right afterwards you had jay carney going out in front of the press. you had david axelrod out there saying that obama's sdigsiveness in killing bin laden proved that we should support his domestic agenda on green energy, and he did get a free pass on all that. >> doesn't every president tout whatever accomplishments he can wrap his arms around and try to build support for the administration? it just seems to me that there's nothing unusual. >> it's not particularly unusual. i think what -- >> did bush take the toppling of saddam as a reason to support his education policies? >> did dick cheney say the decision in this election 2004 was -- could determine whether we get hit again? >> that's the question about foreign policy. it's not a transfer -- >> i think that bush absolutely tried and sought to translate his, you know, strength and leadership and decisiveness in foreign policy to have people say and he is strong in decisive in domestic policy, and i don't think there's anything wrong with that. >> let me spin back to the media. obama goes to afghanistan. he gets a lot of coverage. he gets -- that's an advantage that incumbent presidents have in elections. >> i think this president is politicizing foreign policy 10% or 20% as much as president bush did. >> you still don't like him? >> because he came in and said i'm going to do things differently. same thing with the fundraising. he said i'm going to do things differently, and he wanted us to have this walk on water standard for him, and that's why he is being punished. it's the expectation. >> here is an interesting fact. the morning of the trip bh we did not know about this unannounced visit to kabul, an afghan television station tweeted it, and a spokesman started calling around to news outlets that picked up that tweelt. buzz feed took it down. the drudge report did not. the white house was saying, no, president obama is not in kabul. that was technically true because he had not gotten there yet. they were trying to protect his security. >> lie outright. nobody would -- >> i hope they don't take you up on that and extend it to other areas. >> i think we officially know they can lie outright to dana. >> that would not be a first. when we come back, mitt romney holds an off the record meeting with conservative bloggers and pundits. is he finally starting to court the media mavens? 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[ flo speaking japanese ] [ shouting in japanese ] we work wherever you work. now, that's progressive. call or click today. mitt romney who did little to court the press during -- and i nabtd you were invited and couldn't make it. how did it work out for romney? >> it depends on who you talk to. i think at the end of the day the romney camp -- first of all, i think the romney camp is going to have a hard time switching from primary mode to general election mode. i thought it was a sign that they were responding as if president obama was rick santorum, and i think that their approach to the blogger thing was overdone. they had a lot of mainstream sort of top level press -- print reporters, and they also had just about every right wing blogger you can imagine. i love the right wing bloggers, but i don't think it was -- it was -- you guys should be cheerleaders for us kind of approach, and i don't think that sut sat well with a lot of people. >> daily caller, american spectator, red state, power line, pajamas media and some other less well known blogs. how do conservative commentators who rip romney during the primaries now evolve into supporters for the fall? >> i don't know. my invitation was lost in the mail to this, so i can only guess, but i think what this indicates is that -- and rightly so, that romney is still not comfortable with his base, at least in the conservative media, so he needs to continue to do this sort of outreach. it's not that crazy a thing to do. president obama meets with sympathetic liberal journalists in the white house. i think it says more about romney's insecurity there and his need to pivot, but i think he is making an assumption that just because he is not obama, the conservative media is going to rally, and that may be true eventually. it's not such an easy thing. >> we'll see with how much thumpl. also this week, romney foreign policy spokesman, who is openly gay, resigned, and this came after some criticism from anti-gay conservatives about his hiring. should the press have challenged the romney campaign on why the candidate didn't stand up for the guy? >> yes. and i think the press, you know -- i think this was covered, and i think people, you know, did challenge it. here we are talking about the fact that he is openly gay and suggesting maybe that's the reason that he was, and i think we're right to ask that question because there were conservative groups that called themselves pro-family that had challenged his appointment when it was first announced. i think that's an important story, actually. >> now, he had other problems. he had a whole series of offensive tweets before he joined the campaign in which he attacked the appearance of rachel maddow and hillary clinton and said that calista clinton looks like she snaps her hair on. it leads people to believe that it was his sexuality that forced him out where sfwloosh i haven't gotten to the bottom of this. you wouldn't have the romney campaign declaring to all the world that we begged him to stay. i think it's ludicrous to say thaw can't have a foreign policy spokesman who is gay. i think brian fisher, the head guy of the family -- >> american families association. >> is now going around and saying if romney -- if he is a pushover to me, how is he going to stand up to putin, which shows that appeasing these guys is like feeding an alligator one at a pop. >> he wasn't allowed to speak, and that shows how ineffective he had become in their own eyes where. >> this was an opportunity for romney to have his sister soldier moment. it shows in the press what give him a very favorable treatment if he were to do that, but i think it shows he is still not comfortable enough to do that. >> people don't remember -- look, i realize the conservative base is -- wants mre to sack this guy, but i'm not going do it because i feel otherwise, and i think he would take a few pops on the right, but he would get credibility. >> i don't know that it's the whole base. it's one segment of the base. >> i would just say quickly, putting these two strands of the conversation together, i think this underscores how tough this moment is for the romney campaign because on the one hand, they still feel they need to consolidate that conservative base. they need to prove to those guys, you know, we are your champion. please support us. but, on the other hand, they do need to have their sister soldier moment and show they can be sent rests. >> what about the other burning issue, the fact that ann romney went on cbs this morning and it was noted that she was wearing a $990 shirt. is it fair for the press to keep bringing this up? okay. they're wealthy. we get it. >> yeah, sure. sure, it's fair. i mean, michelle obama gets bashed if she wears expensive clothes, so that's fine. >> all right. we see the videotape there from cbs. before we go, in a couple of sentences, tell us the thesis of your book, the tierney of cliches. >> i wanted to write a funny book, and that's part of it. the basic argument is that conservatives are honest that we're idealogical. liberals claim to be in pure system praying mattists who only care about what works. that's not true. they have a perfectly honorable ideology. it's one they should defend. when they go around saying that they're not idealogical at all they're lying to themselves as well as everybody else. thanks for stopping by this morning. coming up in the second part of ""reliable sources" "new controversy over bob woodward and deep throat nearly 40 years after the fact. dan rather still swinging away at cbs. and rupert murdoch battling a stinging verdict from british lawmakers. just stay off the freeways, all right? 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[ kyle ] it's like we're connected. no we're not. yeah, we are. no...we're not. ♪ the allstate value plan. dollar for dollar, nobody protects you like allstate. they are arguably the most famous reporter and source in journalistic history. a relationship enshrined in this iconic movie. >> listen, i'm tired of your [ bleep ] games. i don't want hints. i need to know what you know. >> it was mainly to protect the covert operations. it leads everywhere. get out your notebook. there's more. your lives are in danger. >> author jeff himmelman reports in a new back to you book "yours in truth" that long-time editor ben bradlee had doubts about some of woodward's claims. not the reporting itself, but some of the colorful details about his meetings with the fbi's mark felt, a confidential informant dubbed deep throat. those doubts were expressed in an unpublished interview 22 years ago. is this much of a story? joining us in washington fred francis, former nbc news correspondent and co-founder of 15 seconds.com. and mark felstein, former cnn reporter, now a journalism professor at the university of maryland and author of the book about watergate "poisoning the press." jeff finds this old interview in which bradley says the following, and i'm going to read it. "did that potted plant incident every happen? this is word moving the flower pot and meeting in some garage. one meeting in the garage. 50 meetings in the garage. i don't know meetings in a garage. there is a residual fear in my soul that this isn't quite straight." is this a big deal? >> i think it's a tempest in the teapot. the fact is -- >> tempest in a flower pot. >> in a flower pot, indeed. i think when you weigh the body of bob woodward's work against this one did he lie, did he mislead ben bradlee, the fact is that everything was true, okay? if he didn't tell ben bradlee everything many my view as a journalist, i have never told my producers or my editors everything. you know? i work for the late great item russert. he always quizzed me about sources, and i always kept one source back that i never told him about in 15 years. whether he told ben bradlee or not, i just don't think it matters because he still, in my view, is the greatest journalism -- greatest journalism of our time. >> was done by woodward. bradlee even in those remarks, he isn't challenging the reporting in the washington post that woodward and bernstein did. he is saying the atmospherics about the flower pot, the garage, maybe that wasn't quite right. your assessment of this significant story? >> certainly not to use the watergate lexicon, a smoking gun that proves woodward embill bellished. i think what bradley was doing was musing aloud the way all of us in washington and across the country were. this was a story so dramatic, so theatrical that everybody was wondering if it's true. >> and the reason people wonder and the reason we know these details is because of the book and the movie we just saw all the president's men that, you know, famously depicted it with robert redford and the woodward role, the interactions between woodward and his source. >> that's right. if you look at both the watergate reporting and then all the president's men, the book, and all the president's men, the movie, it gets less and less cautious as to its -- you know, how strictly it is moared to the truth. the movie has much more dramatic embellishments than the book, and the book has more than the reporting in the post. >> the bottom line, was it all true? okay? and did they fudge the ball one way or the other? i mean, i think -- i can speak for a lot of investigative reporters. sometimes you get so aggress he have, you do fudge the ball a little bit. you do do a few things outside the zone to get the facts. you don't use those unless those facts are correct. >> this isn't about fudging the facts. well, it is about fudging the facts. >> it is. >> in the sense that was woodward's relationship with who we now know to be mark felt embellish for dramatic purposes? if that were proven to be true -- bradlee is saying he had some doubts. that would -- wouldn't that hurt woodward's reputation a little bit? >> i don't think so. i don't think so. i'll tell you something, because of the body of his work. in 40 years, how much of his work -- two things have been criticized, but how much of his work has been criticized? very, very little. >> woodward and bernstein, back in the mid 1970s talked to someone who was a watergate grand juror which is a no-no, and then it was explained that bernstein, they claim, didn't know she was a grand juror when he went to knock on her door. >> that's the weakest part of the woodward and bernstein argument today, that they didn't know she was a grand juror. as an investigative reporter in florida, i talked to a few grand jurors and i broke the law, okay, and i never said anything about it to protect me and to protect them. >> you're acknowledging on this program thaw broke the law. >> you're saying it's not unusual? >> i'm just saying so long the story is true and accurate, as long as you don't use that as a one source and they did not, okay, i think it's correct. >> one of the interesting things here -- there's an excerpt in new york magazine. is woodward's strong reaction to putting this in the book. he tried to press him to not use those -- i talked to him yesterday. he said bob pretty much taught me everything i know when he gets on for a story, he pushes the story at whatever cost. personal allegiance is not the yard stick he uses. i felt an obligation to report it. himmelman got historic as a researcher for woodward. >> right. there are supreme overtones to this story, whether it's the relationship between bradlee and woodward or the relationship between this author and woodward. you know, i do think -- yes, i have talked to grand jurors also. >> guilty. >> i know you're not supposed to do it, and, yes, you sometimes do camouflage it is source to protect. what i think this does illustrate, though, is the difficulty with the woodward method. it's a trust me method of journalism, and there is no independent way to authenticate the veracity of some of the things woodward just said. mark felt is dead. did he use the flower pot or not? by the time he came forward, he was seen i'll, so we have to rely on bob woodward's words. >> the onlying thing i find interesting about this is that bob woodward seems to be stung by himmelman using that fly on the wall kind of technique that woodward has made so famous as a journalistic style, but it worked. >> himmelman started out to help bradlee write his own book. that went away, and himmelman wrote the book himself. there was another interview with bradlee a year and a half ago where he said do i think woodward embellished? no, but he did nothing to down play the drama in this. >> clearly because watergate has such a place in our culture, it's one of the reasons we're talking about it here this morning. up next, dan rather has a new book with an old argument, that he was right and cbs was wrong over that george bush national guard story. why won't he let it go? with the ability to improve roi through seo all by cob. and you...rent from national. because only national lets you choose any car in the aisle... and go. you can even take a full-size or above, and still pay the mid-size price. i'm going b-i-g. 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>> well, on what story does anybody ever know the whole truth and nothing but the truth, but we reported the truth, and that is that president bush, later president bush, when he was in the national guard service, he was at least awol. >> why is dan rather still pushing and defending this story, this discredited story? >> i'm going to defend dan rather on this one. you know, yes, the documents can't be authenticated, but the fundamentals of the story that bush received preferential treatment in the national guard to avoid vietnam. >> that'sen the fund mentals of the story. we already knew that. >> washington, texas monthly, boston globe, they have all done -- this is a new article in the texas monthly that says it. he is defending it because he believes it. >> to use a ratherism. dan rather would rather walk through a furnace and a gasoline suit than admit that he made any mistake. the fact is that you don't go on the air crediting a president with being a slacker and being awol without having proof, and he had no proof. i'm not saying the story may not -- elements of the story may not have been accurate, but if you are going to go on the air with a story, you need documentation, and the documentation was forged, and all these years later he continues to -- >> we don't know definitively that the documentation was forged. let me take a moment to remind people, rather's key source, the guy who got these alleged national memos, he admitted on camera that he had lied to cbs. the secretary of the national gartd office said they never typed those documents. cbs's own handwriting experts raised questions about it. rather is continuing to defend what were at least suspected forgeliries, and i don't know why he should let it go. he is doing fine work for hd net. he is making an issue of the story that was probably the biggest debacle of his career. >> the biggest problem he is having is saying that cbs news politicizes and fired him for part zan politics. i mean, there's absolutely no evidence of that whatsoever. they fired him for putting -- for airing a story that embarrassed cbs news. >> every other anchor does is front for the workers do and blame it on his producers, and he had the courage to stand up tall and say that he believed in it, and he was back in his producers, and it's more you can say for the glorfied actors who read the news and don't know a damn thing about what they're even talking about. >> do you agree with the point that it's not fair for dan rather to charge the cbs caved to political pressure when cbs, after an extensive investigation concluded it couldn't prove or corroborate the story that had it had to pools and retract? >> i think it's an overstatement to say there's a caving depression. the fact that dick thornburn, the attorney general for the first bush, was on the panel that indicted rather is a little suspect, and i can understand his concern about it. and i think that back at cbs, has paid the executives for their silence to gag them smells not of a news corporation trying to engage in transparency, but snelz of a coverup. >> let me tell you what they should have done. okay? this happened at my network, nbc, where in 1992 they aired the story about a gm truck, which gas tank exploded causing fires in a wreck. >> it was rig. ed. >> it was rigged. dateline nbc rigged that fire you should the truck. >> fundamentals of that story were true also. >> that is, in fact, correct. they held on to it for two days. here's the difference. they held on to it for two days saying they didn't do anything wrong, but the story was true, and then they went, you know something, everybody got fired, and michael gartner who is not was not a much loved president at nbc news stood up and said my fault. he fired himself. admitting the story was wrong. that's what rather and cbs has done. >> policemen bring this back to rather. we invited him on this program. he did not respond to that request. is he insuring that this will play a more prominent role when people write the legacy of his career when his eventual obituary is written? >> there's no way this is not going to be in the first jurgensen. >> not even second paragraph? there were things the guy did in his career that were good. >> it's in there, and, you know, give the guy credit for having the courage of his convictions. >> don't give him credit because he didn't have the courage to admit he was wrong. he will go to his grave admitting he was right, saying he was right. >> we got about a minute. i want to touch on a story that ran in politico a couple of weeks ago. we didn't touch on this program because i didn't think there was anything to it. it was a new york daily news photographer who was in columbia investigating the secret service sex scandal tweeting that the "new york times" who scored a couple of exclusiveives on the story was paying people for information. awe photographer laird every later apologized. politico ran a story on the charge, asked for comment. now according to the washington post, "new york times" spokeswoman saying politico was irresponsible to do this. was politico -- do you use one tweet bh somebody hurl az charge with no evidence? >> shame on politico for using this erroneous tweet, you know, plucked out of the ether out of the 350 million tweets a day. >> from a rival. >> from a rival who is getting beat on the story. i don't disagree there. the more interesting thing is this is a natural outgrowth website. it's up to the minute. they actually get an economic advantage for this because there are more clicks. even if they're wrong and they correct it, more people will be clicking in, and their revenue goes up. is this a new business model or a one-time slip? >> the very fact is monitor social media 24-7. you get a minute or two to correct something when you see it wrong. a minute or two. >> you wouldn't necessarily publish in 15 seconds. >> thanks very much. after the break, a british panel pronounces ru period of time mur dom unfit to lead a major media empire. we'll look at the fallout. i've discovered gold. 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[ engine revs ] boat protection people love. now, that's progressive. call or click today. sfwlimplts the scandal at ru period of time must be doch's company has been building for years. plenty of people have been arrested and in london this week a political verdict. >> media barron rupert murdock was blasted by members of the british parliamentary committee investigating the phone hacking scandal. >> a media empire may be hanging in the balance tonight after a blistering criticism of the man in charge, rupert murdoch. >> how much have these british revel aings hurt him and news corp.? joining us from new york emily bell, digital journalism and the graduate school of journalism and a fortunatelier digital -- welcome. >> hello, howie. no conservative members of parliament voted for that language, and it still seemed to echo around the world. >> it's a pretty strong statement to save one of the major business figures of the late 20th and early 21st century, which is that he is unfit to run his corporation. this is the outcome of what i guess is best known here as the poly panel. this is the select committee where rupert murdoch was being pied almost a year ago. once the findings have been very rez nant and reported around the world, it doesn't actually mean a whole heap in terms of a direct threat to his government for the company. >> could this, though, create, generate, accelerate a serious push to shove murdoch aside as head of news corp.? he is 81 years old, and clearly his image and that of his company have sustained some damage here. >> there are several threats here. the parliamentary select committee is chorus gating, but it doesn't have much power over the company. however, in the u.k. there's a parallel investigation going on through off-com. that's the regulator that does have the power to revoke broadcast licenses. they are also looking at the fit and proper nature of news steward of sky. it may have an impact on that. whether this hastens rupert mur dom's own exit from his company. it's still a family company. in the sense that it's a family company, one of the things that this scandal has really done is disrupt the succession plan. this idea that there could be a smooth transition from rupert murdoch to somebody else in the family -- >> like james murdoch? >> like james murdoch. that really is in complete disarray. this is like a pass of parcel of nasty surprises for news and nt is in the center of it because it hasn't stopped unfolding yet. >> in the united states, the fcc almost never yankees a television company's broadcast license. isn't that a real long shot, that the british regulate letter deuce do that to news corps? >> it is a very long shot. done it once in their existence, where they revoke the license of persian tvt is really very hard to imagine that something as established and actually generally respected as sky tv would actually is its license yanked but none of this narrative helps. there is gonna be more rev leagues this week. you have former news corps executives up in front of a third investigation economy, the levinson inquiry, where you have senior executives who will be talking about their relations with the conservative government in the uk in a pretty candid fashion and what it does is it just creates this long-term uncertainty about where this is gonna end. i have to say, it is pretty isolated from the u.s. businesses at the moment, in that you look at all of this mayhem going on in london and then you look at the share price here and it is up a couple of percent. >> i was gonna ask you about that you anticipate my question, first, will met mention this interesting twist, where rupert murdo murdoch's "new york post" reporting on this british parliamentary verdict or criticism of the boss took a completely different tack. seen the headline there, probe, myler lied, he was former editor of news of the world, he was in this as well, murdoch, the boss, wasn't mentioned in this "new york post" report until the 11th paragraph. since you mentioned the impact on this side of the atlantic, senator jay rockefeller has sent a letter seeking evidence whether any americans were involved in any of the hacking that went on in any of these news corps properties. do you think this will reverberate in the united states or pretty asch british scandal and a british story at this stage of the game? >> it has reverberated some point in the states and surprised in a way it hasn't so far. the rockefeller letter i think is a significant move but doubt whether the evidence exists to london, very specific around one or two of the murdoch papers is actually gonna be able to deliver anything concrete there. so, in a way it will -- i think it will take a separate kind of spike of momentum here to really push the story on. but the disruption to the heart of the murdoch family is really the key thing now. >> all right. this is story, doesn't seem to go away for murdoch and news corps. emily bell, you are certainly fit to appear on this program. thank you for helping us walk through this morning. a presidential biographer finds an old virginia girlfriend, a virginia paper sits on stunning news involving its own reporters and vindication at last for a world war ii correspondent. the media monitor is next. beautiful blooms... mae he in mississippi we had more good times... in louisiana we had more fun on the water. last season we broke all kinds of records on the gulf. this year we are out to do even better... and now is a great time to start. our beatches are even more relaxing... the fishing's great. so pick your favorite spot on the gulf... and come on down. brought to you by bp and all of us who call the gulf home. time for the media monitor, our weekly look had he hits and errors in the news business. a pulitzer prize-winning author is coming out with a biography called requests barack obama, the story," he discovers an ex-girlfriend named genevieve cook who wrote in his diary 37 years asting ago, his warmth can be deceptive though he speaks sweet words and can be open and trusting are, there is that coolness. and obama said some characters were compos sits said the new york girlfriend was a composite this led to an overheated drudge headline, owe brahma admits to fabricating girlfriend in memoir. more like litter are license. in a norfolk, virginia, a white man and woman were wasn't and kicked, out of work for a week by a black gachblgt the local paper, the virginian pilot never ran a news story despite the fact that they are reporters for the newspaper. the news surfaced in an opinion column later on. forester described what happened. >> got knocked to the back of my head by my ear, ear was swollen that is when they were reaching in, hitting her in the head, scratched her in the eye. >> editor dennis finley defends his decision to keep it out of the newspapers. >> does an event rise to the level of a news store rained this one did not. this was a simple assault, been accused of burying the story because it is racially motivated. we have no idea who motivated it. >> finley added a memo to the staff flovgs coverup. we bend over backwards to treat ourself the same way we would treat any other member of the community. we go overboard at times to make sure there is no perception we have treated ourselves favorably because of our position. did we go too far here in holding to this standard? i don't know. i will always ask myself that question. let me answer it. the virginian pilot blew this one big time. the attack was absolutely undeniably news. finley says the reporters did not want to be named in the story and that should not matter. that's special treatment. the paper should not have kept this story from its readers. finally, scoop of historic proportion as the the end of world war ii in europe. associated press correspondent edward kennedy reported, a full day before everyone else, the nazis had sur friend france. kennedy's reward, the ap fire him for defying u.s. military cent source. harry truman and win store churchill agreed to suppress the news for political reasons, not military ones. now the wire service is apologizing, president tom curly, calling what happened in 1945 a terrible day for the ap. it was handled in the worst possible way. well, it took 67 years, one of the last injustice of the second world war has been rectified. that's it for this edition of