And well analyze coverage of joe biden and much more but first let me start with something a little there is a mental exercise, what do you think in some other country . Imagine how we cover the new zealand and a president that spends time spreading misinformation and accusing opponents of treason. This week he threatened to close the boarder and backtracked and this is all considered just a normal day. Hes wellknown for lying about policies and polls and minority politicians and suspeometimes e the weather. He grants special access to people that pay money to enter his private clubs. This week experts say thats a National Security risk but the wheeling and dealing continues. Foreign governments and lobbyists know how to spend money at his hotels to get noticed. Companies know, too. They buy ads on tv and address the president directly and work over time to get people booked on his favorite tv shows hoping to change his mind about key issues. Lawmakers do this, too, and its happening out in the open. There say wide spread accept tense he likes tv shows but only have fallen over him. He attacks other sources of news calling them enemies of people. He said this dozens and dozens of times. If you have questions about this, thats too bad. His spokeswoman stopped holding the televised press conferences that had been a tradition for decades. Were lucky if they happen once a month now. This week, the president were talking about said they say wind farm noise causes cancer, which is nonsense but when an aid was asked about it, she didnt call it nonsense. This is what he said instead. What do you say to American Families that say wind machines cause chancer. Still waiting for the readout. Late night comedy shows made fun of the comment and moved on. About that, once in awhile this president says comedians and News Networks that criticize him could be investigated by the government. His allies love to go further. They call for opponents, the other side to be investigated stripped of their powers. Maybe even jailed. Many of these things we know about because of aggressive News Coverage but at this point, some news outlets barely take notice of the never ending errors and em ba embarrassments. The other day the president struggled to announce the word origins and fans seem to buy whatever he says. They scoff at the News Coverage or he and his associates are entangled in many investigations from manhattan to los angeles. They blame a shadow government and media agitators for that. He keeps holding thoueater ralls part of a never ending campaign in the words of one reporter keeps getting angrier and at the same time, hes bemoaning real problems of Immigration Law but saying things like weve got to get rid of judges. To be honest with you, we have to get rid of judges. Frankly, we should get rid of judges. People mostly just shrug it off like hes the guy at the end of the bar blowing off steam or like hes an old man. How would this be covered if it were happening a different country . If the u. S. Reporters were peering in as foreign correspondents trying to cover washington right now. Because all of it is happening right here. The News Coverage keeping up, lets talk about it with katy glick, katy a full house today. Katy rogers, youre up first. You have to make day to day decisions what is most important and less important and it is very difficult with all the news that happens on a daily basis. How are you making these cale la calculations day to day. We have resources to have a fact checker look into the wind mills cause cancer story, which we do fact check the prayer rugs found and the caravans coming north, which we fact checked. The problem is that the president has gotten so good at just spraying the field every morning with 12 tweets or so that have you know factually dubious claims and we have to chase them and treat them seriously. This is still the president of the United States making the claims. You cant say this is nonsense, you have to ignore it. You have to try to check him on everything he says. Again, were lucky we can do that. When its things like immigration and threatening to close the border, we have to take that seriously if hes done it two or three times before because the time we dont do it is the time that it might happen. So were spread therein but you have to sort of, i mean, the one thing i will say is a thing that sounds like a little bit off in the morning like a tweet about a prayer rug in the caravan, that kind of thing would have driven the news cycle for a day or two in the past. Now its like the eighth tweet hes send this morning. Thats absolutely right. With bush or obama, these gaffes or scandals would dominate the news for a week. Axelrod, as someone who was a journalist and joined obama world and was in politics, are you bitter about that at all . The difference in the way these president s are covered . Well, you know, look, there say big difference between donald trump and barack obama. The quality of donald trump is he does not observe rules, northerliynoerm norms, institutions or laws. He does what he needs to do to get what you want. Kellyanne conway set the terms of the debate in the first weeks of the administration when she explained to him as having alternative facts. His idea is hes going to put those alternative facts out. Hes going to let the news media do what it does and then hes going to portray the news media as being bias against him and the more the news media protests, the more these stories get written, the more its a certification to his base that he is the victim in all of this and its been an effective strategy within his silo. Here is another example of one of the weirdest fact checked comments of the week. This is the president talking about his father being born in germany when in fact his father was born in new york city. I looked at the coverage. The network newscasts never even mentioned bringing up this really we recalled birtherism. It was the late night comedy shows. Watch. Its true, frederick trump was born in a very wonderful place in germany, new york city in 1905. At this point hes just messing with us, right . Hes questioning his own fathers birth certificate. Trump thinks his dad is german because he told his assista assistant, if they are looking for me, im in germany. Brian, you know, its such a dilemma because if you chase all of that, if you report it fully, you let trump set the agenda. You let him drive the civic conversation of american life, and i believe with him, its a strategy that he can do it but if on the other hand, if you dont cover it and denounce it, you then normalize it. You then teach generations of americans this is okay to talk this way for a president when its absolutely outrageous and so thats the dilemma. You try to do both of those things but he is using it. He is willing not willing, he likes to be chantransgressive. O you take the echo chamber of fox news. If he says something really offensive about immigrants and then Tucker Carlson says immigration makes us a dirtier country or whatever the exact quote that he gave there was, that is really destructive to american life. We have to denounce it. Every time we do that, every time we chase it down, he is setting the agenda for what we cover. That is a really tough dilemma and none of us, i dont think any of us have figured that out. He drives us to exhaustion. If we quit Fact Checking him, if we accept this, he wins. Thats the way dictators win. They drive the free press almost to exhaustion with this. One of the examples of the dilemma doesnt apply to the press but political opponents. Youve been covering the democratic race and in your stories, ive been wondering how are the democrats trying to breakthrough the trump related noise . This is a problem for them and journalist trying to fact check. Absolutely. This is a really difficult challenge for all the people opponents come 2020 and none of the republicans were able to figure out. The challenge is tough stories have been breaking through whether allegations of im proprie propriety, those stories breakthrough. Its difficult to have more positive messages breakthrough and compounding the challenge is a lot of democrats feel its risky to try and find themselves in a position where they are responding to trump at every turn. If they are out there pushing back, its possible that that could breakthrough but there is concern that that backfires. Right. With regards to the trump Fact Checking, i think papers like yours and cable news, its more equipped to do this daily work because there is more time, more space. You commented there may literally not be a space to litigate everything that happens. Absolutely. There are so many story lines that unfold not only every day but literally every hour that everyone has to pick their spot, what makes sense to dive in deep to litigate but at the same time, its challenge because since hes the president of the United States and his words matter. In the meantime, were waiting for the Mueller Report. Remember this . Two weeks ago of course the barr letter came out waiting for the actual report and to katy rogers, the president is tweeting about this again today. Hes trying to have it both ways. He says it looks like bob muellers team are illegally leaking information but then he goes on to say that the Fake News Media makes up sources. Have you been able to square this . When you start your morning attack of institution, youve got to pick a lane. Either the leaks are real or the news is fake and you got to go one way with this. I think its sort of selling confusion and trying to undermine what might come out and as soon as next week the redacted version of the Mueller Report, what i can tell you is that people inside the white house are less on a victory tour than a couple weeks ago and they are waiting for what this thing says. It would stand to reason that the president is getting out there early saying, you know, dont trust the leakers. Dont trust the media. Dont trust what you see. When you say illegally leaking, do you view this as huffing and puffing . Thats a lot of what you have to cover is huffing and puffing. These attorneys who are, you know, these People Associated with the probe who are leaving it and going back to their firms and whoever is talking, i classified saying i dont like the way this has been portrayed, that doesnt seem like it would be an illegal leak. But, you know, the president is going to take whatever it might becoming out of this team and spinning it to the sort of treason or wherever hes trying to take this. Yeah. Im just wondering as i wrap up, do you ever wonder the idea of how would we cover a president like this if we were outside the u. S. . Do you ever think about that . Well, what sort of leader would we have is my first question . Would we be so exhausted we wouldnt be able to tune in . I just think that somebody made the point, i think it was david or somebody said this is sort of what authoritarian leaders do, they wind down trust in institutions and thats maybe what i would thats where i would be going or thinking when i thats the threat. Thats the danger two and a half years in. To the katys, thank you. To the davids, stick around. We have something later. Up next on the program, the First Television interview with a former murdoch executive who says he had enough. He couldnt take it anymore. Hes going to explain that right after this. Now, full coverage Super Stay Foundation. From maybelline new york. With full coverage pigments. Stays on. Stays flawless. Up to 24hour wear Super Stay Foundation only from maybelline new york. But dad, youve got allstate. With accident forgiveness they guarantee your rates wont go up just because of an accident. Smart kid. Indeed. Are you in good hands . The matters. Ar. Introducing the allnew 2019 ford ranger, its the right gear. With a terrain Management System for. This. A bash plate for. That. An electronic locking Rear Differential for. Yeah. This. Heading to the supermarket . Get any truck. Heading out here . Get the ford ranger. The only adventure gear built ford tough. With its billions of records, dna test you could learn youre from ireland. Donegal, ireland. And your ancestor was a fisherman. With blue eyes. Just like you. Begin your journey at ancestry. Com Global Political upheaval. Its a story in the New York Times about Rupert Murdochs global empire. The authors spend six months on this and a threepart report how murdoch and his companies spoked populism around the world, in some cases destabilizing democracies and a rivalry between his sons who were constantly competing with each other in game of thrones type successi succession. Jim is joining me now. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. Overseeing fox news, James Murdoch is no longer part of the company. What is the significance of that . Well, one of the interesting things we found in this reporting is the two brothers have very different visions. James murdoch saw fox as this big global sort of brand that was bigger than fox news, not identified by his father going into new markets. Loughlin embraces the more political version. James is much more moderate. Loughlin is more conservative. Some say more than his father. James told his trefriends, i a project. Thats a way to tell fox news, which says its a news cop ration. It was interesting james we learned held that view and again, i think in the battle that was very much a theme and the company in the end that loughlin inherits isnt necessarily one you could see James Murdoch runs or wanting to run and that sort of loughlin having fox news, they still have the broadcast network of course and newspapers he wasnt always that interested in as sort of older part of the media but also by the way, still even if diminished where company like fox and news corp get their power and influence. Right. That power is not just in the United States. This map is reminder about the assets in australia and the United Kingdom and your story says that loughlin kind of the apparent is more conservative than people realize. Tell us about details you learned. This comes up in australia. We realized thats where murdoch came of age and identifies with the history tied up with australia and this stories that were hearing from people that interacted with him is he was very close with the Prime Minister tony abbott who is a consecutive figure in australia. He very much believed in as we can tell from reporting in keeping conservative publicat n publications conservative. There was an an in this case do guy marriage editorial and loughlin was displeased and word came back hes pro gay marriage and shows he believes in the marketing position of the company and will keep it in that direction. Jim, thank you for being here. I recommend people check out the full threepart story on ny times. Com. There is a lot of detail in it. Thank you. We dont often get to hear from folks who work at fox or news core, the two companies murdoch has. Fox on one side and news core in the other. They are in the same building and share values. We dont hear from staffers inside but now for a moment that can change. There is a man that quit and resigned who is now speaking out. Hes a Senior Vice President , chief Group Compliance officer and hes here with me now. What you just heard accurately describe the place where you worked . Hey, brian, thanks for having me. It did. I thought that was a great report and it accurately described a lot of things i heard and saw. Its about everybody else in the compa company. Its a place i loved working. In addition to the big personalities in the top. My experience is there were a lot of inherently smart, hardworking descent people there. By in large i thought it was fascinating and accurate. What prompted you to resign in late 2017 . A couple things. Ive never been a consumer of the broadcast products. I didnt work for fox, i worked for news core. Beyond that, i noticed the significant change in tone. Im a big believer in the marketplace of ideas, right . And i was final working with and for people who had different values and opinions than i did but i noticed a significant shift in the relationship with facts, you know, particularly on the fox side and so i think for me when was that shift in tone . When was that shift . You start there had in 2015, right . Sure, sure. I think to the election it became very profitable to fall in line with and anti immigrant rhetoric and i was affected by that. I heard from staffers at fox for obvious reasons cant come on the program and talk and said its really changed and got more venomous in the last couple years. You said you experienced it firsthand by working in the building. How did you interact with the content . I was in the Legal Department not part of the world but every day in the elevators, i would have to endure the coverage, right . A lot of the opinion shows and interact with the folks on tv, right . We had small talk. I understood what they were doing when they got off the elevator but in these few seconds, i was their colleague and exposed to it. As an afghan immigrant, i can only imagine what youre hearing and picking up. Its not all of fox news or wall street journal or news core, is it . No. Thats what is fascinating for me. Its a very Diverse Company and intention, right . And so its absolutely not all of it and i think one of the things that i was hoping to accomplish by coming out is to say were here, too. Right . One of the difficulties for people in my position is that we succeed a lot of times by being visible and keeping quiet, right . I thought it was the wrong moment to keep doing that. Did you ever talk with your colleagues about your concerns before you resigned . Sure, sure. I mean, in addition to being lawyers and auditors and finance people and reporters, were people. Were consumers of news. It was a constant topic of conversation for us and im comfortable saying i wasnt the only one thats troubled. Thats something you can probably assume is true. Troubled by what . The weaponization of information . By what . By the dehumanization taking place in some of the coverage and the opinion shows, and frankly, what i viewed as a lack of decency. I grew up in new york city idolizing daniel pratt tiatrick said everybody is entitled to his own opinion but not his own facts. When people dont agree on facts, its troubling for a lot of folks. The question for people working at all sorts of media companies, do you stop having civic responsibilities because you work in the private sector and what i hear you saying is to your current, former colleagues at news corp and fox, you still have civic responsibilities. Sure. For all of us in the private sector, this is a time to get engaged, to speak up and to stand up, right . These are not revolutionary acts. They should be acts of Civic Engagement and decency. Thats where we neat to start as a country. It reminds me aft staffer that tweeted last month and called her out for stoking high friday of muslims because i was a fox staffer in a vulnerable job who did the right thing and spoke truth. Right. We just need more of that it sounds like. Sure. You know, we need to connect the dots, right . You mentioned judge piro and friday in new york a man was arrested for calling and threatening to put a bullet in her head. One of the things we need to do is connect the dots and figure out what to do with what we find. President trump then criticized omar yesterday again keep the dots going, continue to criticize her after that threat. There is threats happening against politicians of all parties and stripes. There is a broader problem going on but it is important to recognize this environment, this media environment were living in and sounds like for you you had enough. I had enough and, you know, it was time for me to sort of remove myself from a position of not being able to say anything and after the murder of an af r africafte afghrican american after Christ Church and tree of life, it became important to think about saying something and engaging more in the discourse that was taking place publicly. Joseph, thank you for joining me. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Up next, tracking the program of rightwing meme makers into the white house. Were talking about the meme wars next. Ive talked on this phone through the happiest times of my life, and through the saddest times of my life. But i never dreamed in a thousand years that it would save my life. Boom i fell 22 feet, completely shattered my pelvis, in the middle of the woods. I called my wife, she thought i was jokin. I said, man, im not. Im not. I was so lucky that day. Saved my life. vo there for you when it matters most. Get unlimited on the best network with apple music included. 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[ sigh ] introducing an easier way to move with xfinity. Its just another way were working to make your life simple, easy, awesome. Go to xfinity. Com moving to get started. Turning now out democratic race. One of the most exhausting things about campaign coverage, is he in or out . Joe biden is in and at some point soon hell make it official but at some point hell admit hes running and vently admitted it in interviews. He tried to issue semi apologize g videos. This is complicated. Snl even got in on the digs last night. You guys know that im a politician, right . Okay . Im a hugger, im a kisser and im a little bit of a snipper, okay . Lets break it down. David axelrod is with me. He had a conference about campaign coverage. Your view of how biden has been covered in the past week . Its partly about biden and partly about the way we operate in todays media environment. You know, one thing that you learn when youre on the other side is that every day is treated by the media like election day and every story is treated like the decisive story of the campaign and very few turn out to be. This will be one of those. But biden compounded the problem by not disposing of this quickly, one of the bassic premises is crisis communication is figure out where the story is going and get to where you need to go as quickly as possible. He had several days of responses what he put out was a pretty pe effective video i thought honestly and made jokes at a conference. He brought the story back for one more day. So ehe could have done a better job and been more agile dealing with this. I dont think at the end of the day when voters go to the polling places next year that this is going to be foremost on their minds. Well, here is what biden is up against. This is how it may keep coming back and back. This is a mmeme created from a man from kansas. He posted it and the trump whirl posted it and the president himself posted it on twitter. Its biden fondling himself. On one level its a funny meme. Do you think democrats understand what they are up against . There was a mother jones headline saying the right wing media machine is morefe effecti at this and the democrats arent trying. They are effective at Digital Communications and effective at talking to their base. The question is how much it infects the rest of the coverage but this is Uncharted Waters as are many things with trump. You have a president who is going to be, excuse me, live tweeting the opposite partys primary and you can you Better Believe when anything happens in the democratic race, he will have a comment. He will advance a meme like this and democrats are going to have to figure out how to deal with it. Elizabeth warren got into the back and forth on the pocahontas thing and engage income a back and forth with him is what he wants. Its a tricky, tricky path to navigate. The dems are using television quite effectively. One day couple days ago tim ryan is announcing his candidacy on the view and the next day castro is campaigning on the Breakfast Club radio show and on monday Eric Swalwell is expected to announce his run and town halls, we have five town halls this week. Were seeing an effective use of television perhaps. Youre holding the Campaign Journalism conference in chicago this week for young producers and reporter whose are learning the ropes. What advice are you sharing with them about coveraing 2020 . When i covered president ial campaigns in the early 80s, it was precable television more or less. Cnn started preinternet. There was news cycles where you could actually contemplate what you were writing and didnt have to file right away. Most news organizations were stocked with editors who would work on these stories with you. A lot of things have changed and we have the proliferation of news sources. This end reporter covering the campaigns, our mission is to try and give them the tools they need to cover the campaign as effectively as possible. So well do the basic things like here are the delegate rules and how money works and how to track it and so on but will also have philosophical discussions like the issue you raised which is how do you deal with candidate like trump that has a ferrell instinct for gaming the media environment . How do you keep from reacting to events but really digging in and my main advice to the reporters is cover the electret, not polls, not the memes and get out of your bubble because were a very siloed society right now and a lot of reporters and i include myself in this missed much of what was going on in the country in 2016 and its important not to do that again. Yeah, lets find out what issues the voters care about and cover those issues and let them direct the coverage as opposed to be directed by someones twitter feed . Exactly. I think that we cant bring our own bias to the coverage. There are people who thought it was absurd that donald trump could get elected president and didnt really recognize the power of his message to the base voters that he stimulated in 2016. That was a mistake. That mistake shouldnt be made again and the other thing is i would say remember what i said at the beginning of this conversation, every day is not election day. Every story is not decisive. We feel pressure to hype these stories in this environment but voters are much more reflective and take everything in and will make a decision at the appropriate time and may be on a different set of industries than we believe at any given moment. Right. Lets make it voter centered coverage. David, thanks for being here. Great to be with you. Coming up, another question about the 2020 coverage. Are women candidates receiving harsher coverage than their male competitors. Ill show you a story after this. In the Transportation Industry without knowing firsthand the unique challenges in that sector. Coming out here, seeing the infrastructure firsthand, talking with the people behind the numbers creates a different picture. Once i know what a business is truly worth, we can make better informed investment decisions. Thats why i go beyond the numbers. Do you detect gender bias . There is a finding tracking the words used for candidates that say the coverage for women running for the white house is more negative than the men in the fray. Look, it is early. Some of this is subject to change but its a worrisome finding. Well put some on screen while we bring in a commentator on gender and issues and david is back with me, as well. Your reaction to the data that shows that the words used about the women candidates are hasher than the words used about the me men . Despite women being half the population have we never had a female president. People dont like powerseeking women and they are covered more negatively by the media. If you think back to 2016, Hillary Clinton would constantly, we talked about her personality, her voice, whether she was smiling enough, whether she was shrill or yelling too much and meanwhile, Bernie Sanders was constantly shrill and yelling and people took that as a passion. For her, it mate hde her less likable. Instead, were seeing the same thing with buddha judge. Him as a wellrounded person. We know he plays piano and speaks norwegian. Beto has corks. Hes the punk rock dad and skates. We dont tablet camilla is a matter as cooking indian food. Nebraska asks warren what her Favorite Book is. Im seeing the same kind of problems weve had every single cycle and there is six women running now. We have to fix it. It is historic there are so many women running in the race. The coverage has to be sensitive. There is time to prove, right . Its early. Right . Its only april. Yeah, sure, there is time to improve but youre talking about how many hundreds and thousands of years of generations of men and women have been socialized to say as weve said, people dont give up power easily. Thats what is going on here. This is the same thing as the me, too. Were at a tipping point. There is tremendous resistance. One of the things id call on, ive worked with great women editors and strong women editors. The women editors really need to lean on their reporters when they try to make these kinds of assumptions or put make these things into their stories. This is a chance for women that have made it up the ladder and had to work 50 times as hard as men from the world i live in to get to that point. Now is a chance for them to assert themselves. We have to do much better than we did in the 2016 election with th this. It totally agree. It patriopatriot. Think deeply about the association and culture that so many reporter haves gone through, brian. Very aware of it and im glad we can bring awareness to this as we go on for the next, whats it going to be . Year of the democratic primary. David, laura, thank you both. Quick break and then a mystery involving the state department. Did tweets critical of President Trump lead the state department to take away a prestigious award from a journalist . Hear from her in a moment. Now, full coverage that doesnt quit. Super stay foundation. From maybelline new york. With full coverage pigments. Stays on. Stays flawless. Up to 24hour wear Super Stay Foundation only from maybelline new york. Exactly one month ago, the secretary of state and the first lady were hosting this International Women of courage awards ceremony in washington, spotlighting the work of women around the world who show courage in the face of injustice. But someone was missing on that stage. A finnish investigative journalist named jessica arro was supposed to be there, but her invite was rescinded almost at the last minute. It appears that someone at the state department was worried about arros past criticism of President Trump, that they were worried about what it would look like if she was on stage with the first lady. Well, now Senate Democrats have been investigating. Theyve been getting documents from the state department about what happened behind the scenes. So, i spoke with arro about what it was, about what she believes happened and what she still wants to know, and also, maybe most importantly, about the courageous reporting that she did to earn the award in the first place. It was originally my investigations concerning the international influence, the impact of kremlins social media propaganda army, the socalled kremlin trolls. And i specifically started to investigate how are they capable of manipulating real peoples ideas and even behavior, and not just in russia, but also across russias borders. So, thanks to your work covering this propaganda war, you were up for the International Women of courage award. How did you first find out that you were going to be honored . I found out in january 25th when embassy employee in helsinki proceeded to me and told me that i would be the one getting this honorable, precious award, and i was just so happy because my work has also caused me so much troubles and i have become target of a series of crimes, aggravated crimes as well. So, i was just so honored. And i was really looking forward to be able to travel to america and to share my investigations and help journalists in america also to cover this topic. So, yeah, but then it was taken away. Yeah, Foreign Policy magazine is the outlet that first revealed what happened here. It was your criticism of the president on twitter that caused this to happen. How did you react . I was just pleased to get more information because at that time i didnt have any explanation of why the award was canceled, so i was really delighted to hear more. But when i learned about these sources who were telling that it was really about my tweets, i was horrified. I had tweeted straight directly as an answer to President Trumps tweet in which trump was himself attacking the media and claiming that rigged and corrupt media is the enemy of the people. And i had directly answered him and i had told him that kremlin doesnt need any troll factories as long as they have you trolling on their behalf. So, i was thinking then was it this . But then i also thought, well, i still stand by what i said and what i tweeted, and i think that President Trumps attacks against the media are disgraceful and need to be also discussed on twitter as well. When Foreign Policy came out with this article, the state department kind of denied revoking your award for political reasons. The state department instead said this was a regrettable error. Thats outrageous, and its also factually incorrect. Thats why i was so thankful when i found out that there is an investigation into the topic by the democratic senators. Im really enthusiastically looking forward to the possible inspector generals investigation because i really want to know who was the person who really gave the order to cancel my award and what would or she like to tell about her motivation in doing so. You can hear the rest of my conversation with jessica, all about her work uncovering russian propaganda on this weeks reliable sources podcast. For our final bit of news today, lets turn from International Reporting to the best of local ne news. Something in baltimore that caught my attention as a maryland native. For that, i bring back David Zurawik from the Baltimore Sun. The newspaper, which has been suffering from cuts for years and years and years, was able to uncover an incredible city hall scandal last month, a scandal revolve involving the mayor, katherine pew, and these selfpublished books she was coming out with. All these folks were buying up books in what seems like sort of, i dont know. David, you tell us. Youre there at the sun. This has been going on for a month and now the mayor has taken a leave of absence. Tell us what the sun uncovered and what it means about local news. On march 13th, the sun published a story that the university of maryland medical system had bought 100,000 copies of a book series called healthy holly, which were books for children telling them they should be active, they should eat vegetables, those sorts of things. For those books, they were paying katherine pugh, the mayor of baltimore who sat on the umms board 500,000. I think the last baltimore author who got a deal that good was the late tom clancy. It was unbelievable and they couldnt really find many of these books. And her stories, the mayors stories of what was going on kept shifting. The sun dug in, and the sun has now found 800,000 paid to her by nonprofits like associated black charities, like kaiser permanente, the Health Provider which was negotiating with the city for a 48 Million Contract to cover its employees as they paid this to the mayor. This is really civic watchdog journalism at its best. And ill tell you what, almost every day, brian, the sun is breaking a story. If you remember when the post and the times were going at it on stories on the trump administration, you got whiplash going from one website to the other. Right. Thats the way the sun is breaking stories. And this story, brian, is far, far from over. And heres the thing thats really great about it. On the floor of the General Assembly in annapolis, they are debating a package which id be stunned if they dont get it together in these final days and pass it, for reform. A newspaper reported a story. The legislature is now trying to reform the issue, and theyre quoting the sun on the floor of the maryland assembly. This is the way it works. And when you lose your local paper, or when they shut down a Statehouse Bureau or cut back on reporters at city hall, this is what you lose. Your kids money for school goes into the pockets of somebody who sells dealing or insider dealing. Your schools, your Police Department doesnt get the money it makes. This is watchdog journalism. This is civic journalism, and its im so proud to be part of the Baltimore Sun at this point. Right. All the challenges we face, theyre still doing it. Thats the thing, its embarrassing for the city of baltimore. Oh, my gosh. The city i love. But its great to see the sun in action. Theres been more than 30 stories published about this in the last month. And we see this in cities across the country that have been devastated by cuts. We still see these reporters as frontline journalists uncovering corruption, and thats whats going on in baltimore. David, thanks so much for sharing the story with us. I appreciate it. Thank you, brian. Thats all for our televised edition of reliable sources, but remember, our coverage continues online all the time, reliablesources. Com. Coming up tonight at 9 00 p. M. Eastern, the continuation of the original series tricky dick, all about Richard Nixons rise and fall at 9 00 p. M. Eastern time here on cnn. Let me know what you thought of the program today. Send me a message on twitter or facebook, brianstelter on both sites. Your feedback makes the show better each and every week. Well see you next week. Report watch. President trump reveals he has not yet read muellers report as democrats prepare legal action to see it, now. 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