Good morning, everyone. Welcome back. I am beverly kirk. We are continuing our discussion this morning about strengthening democracy with a look at trust in institutions, in each other, and what the latest data have to say about all of this. To put it into perspective, i am joined by filmmaker ken burns and Pew Research Center president mike dimmick. Thank you for being here. Lets jump in with the first question. What is the overall state of american confidence in democracy. I understand you have some new numbers to share with us. Ken thank you. We dont want to get too gloomy but we do care about the facts and the facts are right now america is in kind of a gloomy place. Almost kind of surprisingly so. If you had told me two years ago we would be worried about an economy that was too hot, which wasnt even a phrase we were talking about, that we would be where we are with our covid rates, not necessarily done do ne but feeling better, addressing climate, global competitiveness, that we would have had a Midterm Election that would pretty smoothly and wasnt really contested, i might have told you then, wow, we would be feeling pretty good as a country. But we are not really. The poll we put out this morning shows america in a pretty gloomy spot. 19 satisfied with the state of the nation. That is pretty low. We were asking about peoples outlook and peoples looking back. The outlook is very gloomy. We have fewer people confident in the future of our country that weve seen in previous polling during the pandemic and before. We asked really specific questions about if you think about america in 2050, what do you think the country will be like and really acrosstheboard, the outlook was pretty gloomy. Gloomier than we had seen in the past. We asked about to you think our economy will be stronger or weaker . You think the u. S. Will be more or less important the world, less important, or politically divided . 77 think what were feeling today is only going to intensify over the next 25 years or so. Across a lot of fronts, this sense of a dour outlook and then putting it in Historical Context we said, thinking about 50 years ago, do you think we are better today or worse than 50 years ago . Today american say about two to one, worse. We have not seen that before. Usually there are people who have the nostalgic view of the past but to see a really tip in that direction is quite striking. Beverly let me ask you, why do you think we are feeling this way . Ken it is a combination of factors. We tend to be so, even we dont have ones and zeros, we seem to think of the world in a kind of binary construct and nothing is binary. It is interesting that 50 years ago, would put us in 1973 when we were still trying to disentangle from vietnam, there were hundreds of bombings by a radical left. There were a lot of things going on. I always find it so interesting when i do the anecdotal informal holes of audience i speak to, people are happy in a particular period and then you point out what was going on, i have been told many times that they would like to be back in the 1930s or 1940s when it were simpler times. I said oh, when there is the greatest economic dislocation in the history of the world followed by the greatest cataclysm responsible for the deaths that we think 69 people . People stop and say, oh, yeah. I think in some ways [laughter] ken someone who studies this in anecdotal fashion and narrative fashion, that narrative that is presented to us today is one that started accumulating imperceptibly. And because we are in siloed where we get our information, it is not really about the fact that michael cares so dearly about as do i, it is the fact if you keep hearing the same thing over and over again from your source, you begin to believe it. And that narrative is not necessarily in sync with what peoples experiences are. I dont want to sound pollyannaish. At the same time i dont want to sound like chicken little, either, that the sky is falling. These are incredibly fraught times. I think how people responding to it as Marshall Mcluhan said because the medium is the message about how theyre getting their information and how the negative viewpoints are being reinforced and reinforced and reinforced. We are in this incredibly expanding hot economy as you say. We more than replaced all the jobs lost by covid. As you said, michael, a midterm that went by without handwringing that had happen with the previous election. I think in some ways, the opinions we give often reflect the most dire version of the narrative that is presented to us in our own lives and our own lives are kind of going on. There are less dramatic. Baby that is part of it. Everything in our media culture suggests if it bleeds it leads and ive got to somehow reflect that dourness. I dont discount the amount of discouragement and the lack a faith which is really unusual for americans that i think that is something we can dive down on, but i am very troubled by where we are right now. But as 70 was an amateur historian involved in telling stories about history, i am always surprised because you realize you have seen it all before, that there are places where the fever of disappointment or disillusionment breaks and then all of a sudden, tomorrow you are in some new era of good feeling. Beverly if i could jump back to the facts, it is a gloomy outlook but is it by divide . Is it because were so polarized . In parts of the country were the economy perhaps hasnt rebounded as much as it has in here in the Washington Area and the east coast and the west coast where people are maybe feeling a little bit more tense and alone more stressful, how does that divide figure into the numbers that you just told us about . Myco one of those outcomes was whether our Income Division in the country would be bigger or smaller in 2050 and by 80 plus percent think we will get even more separated economically as a country. I think it also plays in and kens comments, we are in a notably polarized period. I dont need to tell you that. But it is notable in two different dimensions when you really want to break it down and understand. One, we find fewer divisions in our society that dont fall into a red versus blue kind of alignment. It used to be that you might find common cause with 70 on one issue, disagree with them on another issue. That is less and less common in peoples experiences, one of us versus an enemy within our own country. That leads to our cycles with the second dynamic of it which is deeply personal identity with partisan politics and this sort of extended telescoped view of the other side and the political array. That sort of accelerated to the that we not only feel like this division is cleaving our country, but we start to lose confidence in our own fellow citizens and how what their intent is, how informed they are, how effective they are as part of our democracy. Beverly we have been a 5149 split nation for a while. What youre talking about seems reflective of that. Is there anyway to feel Common Ground . Im still trying to bring in some a little positiveness into the numbers. Michael i think the outcome of that you are right about the 5149. For about 30 years since the mid1990s, pretty much every american election, whether general or midterm, has been the balance of power. That makes every election feel existential. When you feel the other side is not only disagree with you on issues that will actually damage the country if they can hold the power. That is been the mood. It is continue to accelerate. That leads to this hypercompetitive two particular things we as citizens can be conscious of and communicators can be conscious of his the perception that everything zerosum in that environment. Any gain by the other side is intrinsically a loss by my side, which is truly not the way Civic Affairs happen. And the sort of anxiety over slippery slopes. If we give an inch on this issue, were going to lose everything. You can think about that upland honest any debate going on, that there is no room you can think about that going on almost any debate, that there is no room. Beverly i want ken to talk barb at the divide. This has been building over several decades, correct . Ken i think so. We have it another periods. We fought a civil war and we believe we murdered over 750,000 of her own people over the issue of slavery and states rights and other things that people bring into that conversation. I think this has been building significantly since the vietnam war particularly but other you can see scenes of it in a postworld war ii communist us versus them that people was talking about. When that disappeared, we turned inward on ourselves. I think this exaggerated would we decide that no matter what happens, the great genius of our democratic process has been that as george will told me in a film, democracy is the you dont get everything that you want. The compromise is at the heart of that. Now we are at that uncompromising state that happens periodically, certain happen in the run up to what we call the civil war and other moments in our country. We sort of feel that now, there is no room, you cant compromise on this, this is the wrong thing to do. You add the take no prisoners attitude we see and at the same time there are other factors that seem to suggest i mean, were looking at civic participation at levels that are just unbelievable. The last election, the Midterm Election. Who is voting. In some ways, there might be a Silver Lining that youre looking for, beverly, just in the fact whatever anxiety people are feeling about this particular situation is that it is manifesting in a little bit more than just passive pulling out. It used to be we complained about all of those people who did not vote and what that meant, that apathy. I think what were saying is more active Civic Engagement but under this dark cloud. I will go back to the us versus them. This is been things that human beings have been doing since there were human beings. We have been making an other of somebody else. I realized recently have been working for nearly 50 years making films about the u. S. , but ive also been making films about us. That is to say, the lowercase two letter plural pronoun as well as we and our and the controversy and complex and a bit u. S. Jefferson says all expenses shown mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils our supper sufferable. He is kind of acknowledging this new thing, this republic is going to take a lot of work and a lot of energy and the default position of human beings is to passively accept authoritarianism. There has not been any other form of government up to that point. So i think what we see right now is that existential threats michael mentioned, because we are in one of the great crises that we have experienced, and it comes with, unlike the other three crises, a real sense that the stuff we took for granted, free and Fair Elections come the peaceful transfer of power, independent judiciary come on and on and on, seem to be part of the equation of what is not quite right from my particular point of view and my little silo where everything is been repeated over and over again. Instead, the weighing of facts as we have to do in pulling and telling stories, you are susceptible to just the fact if something is repeated long enough, it must be true. And absent of soviet enemy, existential enemy, we turned on ourselves and we have made the other the enemy. That is been important in the last 30 years, an important component of the increased stakes at hand. There is always i made a film on jazz. At one point, was said to me sometimes the thing and an opposite of the thing are true at the same time. I think in a binary way of receiving data or in interpreting data in the way we respond politically in those silos of ours, we forget that is how life goes on. That is how we deal with everything. You cant be married or have kids if you dont understand that sometimes the thing in the upset of thing is the the thing and the opposite of the thing are true the same time. Our lives are much more forgiving and sort of purposeful and yet when we pull out and we think about things in political sense, it returns to that non existent binary and never becomes the source of a lot of problems. It is my way or the highway and then you really run into trouble because jeffersons machine does not work unless there is compromise, unless there is a sense that in order to maintain this very, very new thing, weve actually got to work really hard at Civic Engagement. Civic is about a dirty word as you can get today. Beverly civics is a good word, i think. We should make it a good word again. Michael i am talking to you from a tiny count and you have sure. That is politics. We are debating whether to buy a fire truck or a pumper for the fire department. These are really serious things. They dont sound like it in the scope of our conversations, but we have to really realize the way in which we are liberated in our ordinary lives from the tyrannies my best example, natural disasters, it is often people rescuing people who dont look like them. My whole thing is that if you think about it as an us there is no them. Unfortunately, the dynamics of our Politics Today continually making the other a them rather than understanding it is all us and only us. There is only us. I think that is part of the message im trying to convey today. Beverly you mentioned, ken, we might be in the middle of what you call a fourth crisis. The other 3 the civil war, great depression, world war ii. Are we in a fourth crisis . Ken most deftly. I dont want to soft pedal this seriousness of the moment and try to somehow not interpret the data that michael is giving desk without a kind of sense of urgency and even to some extent panic, but i think, yes, i believe the movement and flirtation with authoritarian antidemocratic impulses combined with the pandemic, combined with the racial reckoning again George Floyds murder, subsequent murder of many, many other black and brown people throughout the country for no reason other than the color of their skin, has provoked in us the kind of crisis that heals very much the same. As i mentioned before, those other crises, except in particular moments and areas, did not have with it the idea of free and Fair Elections being challenged or peaceful transfer of power. We had a National Election in the middle of the civil war and the incumbent won and he was not expected to. Nobody cried foul. And also the independence of the judiciary i think has added to a sense of pessimism. If you cant look for some umpire who is going to look at it and see that the guy is out at first but calls it because of he knows the runner, you get a little bit concerned about the whole structure of things. I think this is very much, as existential as it gets in the united states. At the same time, there is violence against other people. We have not murdered 750,000 of our own. Were not in the midst of an Economic Situation in which some American Cities the animals in the zoo were shot in the meat distributed to the poor. We are not engaged the great worldwide cataclysm that murdered 60 million human beings. So i think we can take some pause from that and figure out how to get our own house in order. Lincoln, not even 29 years old, he is addressing an afternoon conference in springfield, illinois. The topic was foreign policy. He says rhetorically, when shall we expect the approach of danger . Shall some trans atlantic giant step the earth and crush us in a blow . That he answered his own question, never all the armies of asia, europe, africa. If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we will live through all time or die by suicide. So he gets the big two oceans protecting us, but also understands as much as we can incubate ideas of liberty and freedom and advancement and be a working model of what enlightenment was about, we can also incubate other things. A love of money, a love of guns, opposition, of othering people. I think what the current data show is that we are at that place where we kind of perceive that existential threat that lincoln so perceptively articulated as a young man well before his congressional and president ial career. Beverly is part of the problem that depending on where you live in this country you may think of one set of facts or another set of facts . Michael for sure. We often say were in the business of generating data at the pew center. People are not lacking for data. Everyone is coming at you with some kind of number and theyre usually trying to persuade you with something. People have become a little anxious that there is such a thing as a source core fact or truth and it becomes easy to gravitate toward the data points that sort of confirm what you already believe or reinforce your teams direction of travel or make the other side look bad. I think you are right. There is a cycle of that kind of questioning and doubting. I think kens point about the Supreme Court of the court system is an interesting one. We have tracked use of the courts and at the end of the day, it is the ultimate adjudicator and sense of that independence is central. Theres been a lot going on that has left both sides to feel anxious about that. Both the left and the right seeing a court that they worry is a place that has a bias against them. And all of the sun, that makes everybodys confidence feel like it has no grounding. Beverly which leads to the next question which is about trust in institutions, which piece research has found eroding. Pews research has found eroding. You said it began eroding back in the 1960s. And there was watergate and was recently, the pandemic. And the questions surrounding whether information was trusted. Lets talk about the news media and the role it may or may not play in the erosion of trust and the fragility of institutions. Jab data talking about the media and the government and respected this . Michael you can see a lot of skepticism about ideologies embedded in media. You do have to take a little bit of a pause on that front. I think what is notable in todays media environment is its fracturing relative to what we think of as historical today, which is a period in maybe that 1950s and 1960s of a relatively centralized unified National Media infrastructure that had developed a sense of professionalism that was sort of defining what it meant to play that Fourth Estate role in the country. That was our ghibli an anomaly. In the history of the media in this country to have that centralized and that professionalized and that separated from ideology. But returning back potentially to that more politicized, more fragmented, or hyper focused on particular issues and topics is destabilizing. People dont know what to believe. They may driving gravitate toward different sources. It is not that people distrust all information sources. Most can identify a list of sources we trust but they may be different than sources that other people are trusting at any given time. I would say it is a decentralization process, a kind of fragmentation process that feels deeply disruptive to us right now because we were in a period where there was a kind of central Media Authority that was establishing a ground truth for a while. Beverly ken, what would you say looking historically at this . There was yellow journalism back in the 1930s and 1940s. Feeling thing different today is the technology that allows the only thing different today is the Technology Allows the line to get around the world by a click of a mouse. Were not really talking about something in terms of there being this information that is out there that may or may not be factual. It has always been the case, it is just the technology that allows it to proliferate so quickly, so fast, and be generated in 70 different places. Ken and i think be manipulated. The yellow journalism of the late 19th century that helped propel us into the spanishamerican war and other periods emilio afterwards and which muckrakers were using the platform other newspapers and their magazines to advance social cause and progressive reform, you can go by to the revolution war im working on a film. Sam adams is just a really great guy and keeping grievances alive. [laughter] he wants to make sure you know how bad things are and how bad written is, and yet pamphleteers is one of the greatest ones in the history the united states, thomas payne. His common sense was just riveting. Here is a brett who just despises monarchy. One of the great lines in history is, i still cant figure out why should be ruled by an island. That made a lot of sense for people. I think what happens is we do not appreciate now in our distance just how bad the depression was, what it took to get back on our feet and the the second world war. The systems, the bipartisan systems that effectuated that result in created a postwar environment that did nato and the Marshall Plan and worked together. You will find periods were republicans and democrats are coming together to work on really important things on guns limiting the access to certain guns. Those congresses would be appalled at the idea that an ar15, and military rifle would be out there. And that would be a slippery slope that mike was talking about that is going to be if you take that away, youre taking our guns away. People were regulating that sort of stuff. The ability for parties to come together, even with great dissension within each of the parties over things like civil rights and Voting Rights and stuff that has been eroded right now. I think those media institutions have in some ways violated one of the main tenets of what the First Amendment means. It comes pretty open and unfettered, but you cant quite fire in a crowded theater and yet that is what media has become in many instances and for many people most dire predictions about the other come not from the traditional media, but from media that has grown up realizing if i say it long enough, as i said before, and often enough, and i would say whatever i want fox has had to pay lots of money because they promoted something that was they knew was false. Therein lies the problem. There are lots of other false things that are being promoted all the time everywhere that dont have the sort of clear line of sight that dominion andm smartatic and others have with regard to their lawsuits about it. But a country which defamation is really impossible to prove and they did not settle before in court, it is interesting to see, an autopsy of how this has gone so terribly wrong. It might be possible to presume that the American People who i think in a lot of cases we just say even the data suggests we ought to be fraternal about it. Oh, theyre feeling this way or that way. They are pretty smart. I tend to trust what they are you remember the last president ial election was won over 7 million or 8 million votes. Just a huge number of people. The loser got more votes than anybody had ever had up to that point and the winter had even more, so i go back to voting which is in some ways the response to all of these feelings and expressions, the narratives that either get by the way a question is asked or by their own ecosystems, promoted and ones own life is a little bit different from that. Ones experience at a personal level, at a community level, at a state level, a National Level turns out in some ways to be slightly at odds with what everything is suggesting. Again, i dont wish to be pollyannaish, i just shriek it take a lot of this with a grain of salt. It requires, good grief, with all his flaws and contradictions, im that all men are created equal and he owns hundreds of human beings. Doesnt see the contradiction or the hypocrisy. We are foisted on these all the times i think we owe it to ourselves that the vagueness of his words permit us to realize just how much social and civil engagement means. We finished a film most recently on the u. S. And the holocaust to see the legacy of antisemitism, the disposition of native lands, eugenics, pseudoscience. Not letting in as many people as we could have easily let in and refuge from the holocaust gives you a pause and sends us back to a sense of i have to be more engaged. I have to do more. That is the antidote to everything. If you were with us for the previous panel, the Civic Engagement and being involved, the doctor saying howd do we fight this, do something, that seems to be a line in the conversation today. Sticking with media and the idea of information, i want to get your thoughts on misinformation and the role that storytelling can play in helping to combat misinformation. It seems theres a lot of information coming at everyone from a lot of different places. I know you have some data on that. People are rightly very anxious about misinformation, which is a good sign. There is a lot of skepticism out there, a lot of awareness that this environment we are in is full of truths and mistruths, misrepresentation. The question is, does that let you say well i am not going to believe anything . Or let you construct your truths , dispel the idea of truth impact. But i think the fact as early as we are in the arc of modern information technology, very early, how many years have we had iphones . It is not that much in the course of our ability as a species, we are front and center conscious of this stuff. One of the good signs we are actively thinking about this, people have healthy skepticism. Disrupted and believed vice, there probably is not an area and could correct this when misinformation was not a problem in conversation at one level or another, around health or politics or anything. These things are not entirely true, there is certainly a way modern Technology Oh and sup floodgates of opportunities for misinformation to travel faster and further. But i think youve already seen ways for our consciousness of that are front and center. I agree, i meant to address before your comment mike picked up on it the speed with which it goes around and gets out there is problematic. It never had that kind of speed to it. Speed is relative, so i think we have to take it with a grain of sand. Very understanding of how much manipulation it is. One little anecdote, in 99, nightline invited James Cameron and me to talk about it. Just finishing titanic, it was filmed with cgi, so nothing was true. Everything was invented in the image. He presumed sparks would fly between the two of us because i represented the guy who was the tortoise who was lumbering through with just the facts, while the hair is hare iss we did not battle at all. We understood that when nothing is true, you are in a horrible place. I think we are much farther down that road right now. Yet somehow, the governors on that engine breaks our own sense of, maybe i should not have believed that. Or what can i do . I am all for the cures, they are pretty right in front of us. One is to read and read a lot. To look for mainstream sources of information, newspapers. It does not matter what your political inclination is. You can find a great newspaper doing that. Do the same if you are getting your information from oldfashioned broadcast television, stray away from the extremes of cable into something more mainstream so you can get a sense that somebody else has a point of view and it is not the end of the world to hear that point of view expressed. It does not have to anger you into further reinforcing your own resentments. If it is online, gravitate to a variety of sources. These are simply thing to do and they are republics, they really are. Find ways to engage the people who do not believe the way we do. I think most of the people within the sound of my voice spend most of their lives within an ecosystem that is the same thing. Maybe you go home for thanksgiving, there is uncle soandso you cannot talk to or he will not talk to you about this sort of stuff. I live in a small town, we cant get by not talking to each other. I do not think the guy who plows right outside my road shares the same political beliefs. I could be wrong, but weve got to negotiate a lot of other things. Its been a tough winter for us appear. They are in some ways more cynically indicative than some of the stuff we are talking about that seasonal politics and opinions are about. I think the engagement with others adds to the lists of reading and getting mainstream sources of news, so you do not find yourself down the rabbit hole that we find so many people, particularly people in moments of crisis who have done horrible things recently. Relatives say they went down a rabbit hole of qanon or something or antiblack or whatever you end up with the kinds of horrible tragedies we have experienced recently. Let me ask both of you, weve established that no one trusts the media. [laughter] maybe the media has given them reasons not to trust. I trust my media. [laughter] that is the interesting thing. I think the data will back me up. Most people trust their local news. They think congress is the worst thing on earth, they love their congressman or congresswoman. Are there other institutions that people still trust . What does the data say . It is a great question. The more broad and abstract things are, the more doubtful and mistrustful people are. The more concrete they are, the more confident they are. We released data earlier this year on how people look at government. You ask people about almost every Single Agency of the federal government, top to bottom, more people say they are doing a good job than a bad job. The actual work of government is not what people are mistrustful of. They think there are capable people doing capable work. Is it always as efficient and timely as it could be . Maybe not, but at the end of the day, people understand that is happening. It is the broader politicized world of government that people are thinking about when they say they do not trust the government these days. I think that carries through the other areas, as well. You ask about media, when you say the media, what is that . That is a fiction i can project my worst impression on. Most people have sources they trust, the more local, the more close it gets, the more they trust it. The same in medical spaces, people trust their doctor. They may have doubts about the overall medical system. They are worried about the money, other elements that might be introducing. What they are experiencing is costs and things making it hard for them to navigate medical information and get medical services. It is similar to what ken is saying. Not necessarily just neighborhood closeness, but the more approximate things are to you, the more there are still avenues for trust, for civic action that can be meaningful and rewarding and therein lie the roots. That is a hopeful note for democracy, the overarching theme of our conversation. Is that the hope, it is at that local level and less about the broader picture . I would say, to some extent. Technology is a big theme in all of this, communications technology. That has these dual capacities. On the one hand, modern information can make everything more feel more overwhelming. At the same time, it is deeply empowering for people to find their own communities, likeminded individuals, to realize their Life Experiences are not just their own. There are other people who share it. If you think about the Way Technology and power diversity, it is incredible. It has empowered important conversations that are important to happen. Technology has been creating new forms of community. We are only in the earliest stages of this. Even beyond how many people voted in 2020, which i agree with ken is a remarkable thing. 30 years ago we were wringing our hands over the fact nobody was voting anymore. What will happen when nobody shows up for elections . We are not worried about that today. Do not jinx the midterm. The other way to think about civic activity is the more community level, community can be physically local, but it can be in other dimensions of community that are all new because of technology. We are getting ready to take questions from the audience, i have two lightning round questions i want to ask of both of you. This is such a great conversation, it could go on for a while. So that we can end on a positive note this part of the conversation, can you share a piece of advice on how we can build bridges or find Common Ground . Let us start with ken. I always think about dr. King. He said all people are caught in an Inescapable Network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. He knew that what affected me affected you, i could not be who i could truly be unless you were who you truly were. We have gotten a little away from that, but our faith tells us this, our art tells us this. So many aspects of our reason tells us this. The present horizon of the local view that we were talking about permits you to ascertain and triangulate real distances, rather than the abstractness of the larger big things. I think we are overwhelmed by the amount of information, not just the speed at which the light travels, but there is too much. How do you deal with the tsunami of information . I moved up here 44 years ago, because i thought becoming a documentary filmmaker, strike one in american history. Strike two on pbs meant i had taken a vow of anonymity and poverty. I did not, im happy to say. I did not leave and part because of the intimacy the circumstance appear, the intimacy of relationships with people, the fact you cannot get away with lying about yourself in front of nature, nature does not let that happen. The fact they stayed with public broadcasting, which is an institution that has got that. I could have done better in a Financial Sense if id gone elsewhere, but i do not think it would have done better as a filmmaker. More importantly, a human being and citizen. We have within this large media beast a sense of false choices that think we have to make a certain path. I remember i was interviewing someone i used the word career. He said careerism is death. Scared the hell out of me. I never said career again without talking about it. I always said my professional life, because i wanted to make sure that though he has been dead since 1989 and i miss him terribly, he scared the hell out of me. I think too often, the word career as a substitute for what you should. If you smell right, by the right car, where the right kind of genes, it will be ok. It is not. It is unpredictable. None of us are getting out of this alive. We have bigger fish to fry than some of these phony dialectics that we are often presented with and often asked to choose from. Just read statements to the judge before people were sentenced january 6. It is a complete reversal of belief systems. That happens in an instant. You get a new kind of religion right away. Let me ask you to answer that question, then the second lightning round question before we go to the audience, can you share what you think is happening today that gives you hope makes you feel hopeful . I do not want the conversation to be completely gloomy. I agree with ken on the first point. What can you do is recognize that we are in an environment that is going to exaggerate and allow you to catastrophize if you want to go there. This is not to downplay serious issues we face as a nation and a world. But recognize, what can you do . Everything is constructive to advanced polarized thinking, that is the nature of where we are in the ark of this technology and our political and social systems. If you can hold firm on that and say do not go there, giving an inch does not mean giving up everything, there are pathways to building ridges that can be better for everybody, not about me winning and them losing. That is where you have to hold firm. My optimistic notes are around the idea that, as rightly concerned as we are about a lot of the ways these disruptions are dividing us, it is finding new community. There are so many examples of things happening because of technology, whether it is at an individual level, around social movements. It feels trite, but the metoo movement, black lives matter, those were online social movements and they crystallize the important conversations that were not happening until people got together and used something to force a conversation. Did they fix everything . No, but we are talking as a society about issues we were not before. That is a new form of social movement and social activism that is great. It is a signal that voices can be heard in new ways. What makes you helpful . And novelist says the best arguments in the world will not change a single persons point of view, the only thing that can do that is a good story. Stories are elemental. Honey, how was your day . We edit human experience. I think somehow, we get so enslaved, sort of a stockholm syndrome with the arguments. We forget there are other things going on, there are stories. The ongoing dynamic of the ark of our own lives, the lives of the people we love and, by extension, the country we love. The data is so pessimistic in one way and, at the same time, it has always been like that. If somebody is an amateur historian, you say i can take a deep breath because they went through that back then. There were 25,000 klansmen in 1925 merged into washington, d. C. And spread american flags over the steps of the capital. Nobody was trying to stop them. They owned a good deal many states, including half the state of indiana, was under control of the clan. It is not like that now. If you steps back sometimes, but several steps ahead. We have gotten further along. Having stories to tell how was your day . It becomes the way in which we can actually metamorphosis i a lot of this kind of junk, a lot of the stuff that feels like it is a pit in my stomach, and continue on. You have given us a lot of food for thought, now we want to hear from the audience in the room and those joining us online. If you are online, you can ask a question on twitter or comment on the live website. I saw a hand here. Thank you. It has been a rich conversation. We have been concerned about democracy for a very long time, trying to lift up the voices of the people so they can be understood by policymakers, trying to work at the quirky and difficult intersection of the state and federal government. Lately, weve been working to make courts more effective and equitable. Three branches of government are covered. I wanted to get your voice into the conversation. Talk about the free press, which we always thought was essential to democracy. How do you think it is going these days. Do you have any lessons or bright spots or hopes . My initial answer to that question is i am concerned about what i see on television and in the media at large. There has to be a focus on just telling the facts. The phrase that is famous, just the facts. More news organizations need to spend more time doing that. People trust local news sources much more, as we discussed, then they trust other media outlets. I think that is a great place to talk about rebuilding trust in media. Shameless selfpromotion for syracuse, we just awarded the prizes for political reporting in the local winner was a reporter from nashville, tennessee. The Tennessee Legislature is all over the news. This local reporter has been covering State Government and issues in the Tennessee Legislature that are now known nationwide for over a year. His entry was the series called revealed, you can google it. It will give you a lot of background context to what is going on there right now. But that kind of trust, that kind of reporting, just the facts, much more of that is needed and it is hard, because there is a declining number of local News Reporters and State Government reporters across the country. There is a thing im really interested in called states newsroom, a Nonprofit Organization network of journalists across the country who are covering local and state level news for their communities. Im so excited about it, because they are doing a good job of telling people about what is going on where they live and how it impacts them. Other questions . Hello, thank you for this enriched conversation. I wonder if you could talk about the erosion of something you know well, the public trust in polling itself. I think people perceive that polling is more challenging, it is harder to get them to answer the phone. I wonder if you could speak to what you would articulate a sort of the social argument for polling as we move into a contentious president ial election and what you think we should be doing about bad polling. Itself contributes to misinformation. Thanks. On the one hand, americans and other countries i do not think it is new that people are skeptical of polls. Polling is a very difficult science, because you are trying to get ideas out of peoples heads, that is an active translation. It is easy to put thoughts in peoples heads, put words in their mouth as opposed to listening and hearing what people are saying. So i think polling has a tricky reputation. Technologically, this is a really interesting time and exciting time to be in polling. Wed released studies last week about new ways to do polling, very few pollsters are doing the old telephone calls. We all screen our calls and rarely answer the phone if we do not know if it is a friend of ours. But there are other ways to reach people that you can get good, representative samples and investigate their thoughts and give them more space to express themselves, rather than trapping them in the language you are putting on them. I think there is a civic case for polling that is important, otherwise i would not have been in this field for most of my career. Elections are essential and imperfect in a democracy. Elections, the way we structure them in america, ultimately force you down to choose choices. Usually neither are perfect from your perspective, neither represents your own views and values. Yet, whoever wins claims the mandate, claims this is what the American People said, and they are able to carry that forward. As important as elections are, that is a misrepresentation of what people are really saying. If you do not have polls that are more inclusive than elections, that include the voices of people who did not vote, as well as more nuance than the binary choice, you are not understanding where the people are in a meaningful way. It is an important addition in an effective democracy. Another question. Yes, i think it is interesting we talked about polarization and gloom, mistrust. We cannot be alone in this, how does this look around the world . This is uniquely america, we all just talk about ourselves. It is a very american trait. [laughter] we tend to think about ourselves a lot, we tend to not think about what we could learn from looking at the rest of the world and what it is experiencing, how it is adapting. A lot of the gloom the concerns about longrange future, those are not unique to america. There are a lot of advanced economies in a similar cycle. Our opportunities going to continue to grow . That feeling is not uniquely american and there is a lot to be learned how that plays out in Different Countries in different ways. I think the two signals that are very strongly american, one is the extent of the politicization , the polarization. There are magnetic forces that pulled almost everything into a singular cleavage. Not to say there are not divides over issues, but the divides can play out differently across different issue spheres. That allows for bridge building, i disagree with you on this. Maybe i will go out industry and make my case over that issue. The next issue, there is area for agreement. America has a deeper cleavage than most other countries. The other is the way we look at technology and social media, we are anxious about the way the issues of misinformation and the lack of civility coming through new technologies and communication a lot of other countries see that and are worried about it, but they also see a lot of the pros, things weve been talking about, opportunities for inclusiveness, they take a more nuanced view of the pros and cons of technology. America has a strong anxiety over this that stands out. The gentleman here . Thank you for doing this. I wanted to ask about civility and decency versus anger and divisiveness. There seems to be more rewards these days in politics to lean toward the latter rather than the former, how can we flip that around . I think you are right, there is a lot of reward system for the more divisive language. Part of that is in ecosystem. The more radical thing you say, the more likely to go viral. There is no mediating institution like a local newspaper to say so and so said this crazy thing. That is gone. The crazy thing gets accelerated and rewarded. We havent really quite come to terms with that yet and i do not know where the endpoint is. I think a lot of the things that we now focus on are bright, shiny objects. Virtue and character, at least we said so. We go back and find those in virtuous and a less than desirable characters. I am struck by the absence of values that are absent from politics because the mitigating vehicle is media. Not the person who has brought the Fire Equipment and is plugging 20 things into the same blog. We go to the fire and parked our camera for months, airplane hangers are waiting for a politician to fly in and say that is the most outrageous thing. We begin to live and breathe by that kind of thing. Someone trying to figure out what is going on in the american revolution, not succumb to the basic 55 white guys in philadelphia and other stuff is happening, they are all geniuses and founding fathers. It is a complex set of events. It is interesting how much virtue and character are united in cause. I do not see that as much and i am looking forward to returning to it. No one can be shamed today. When i was young, my father was trying to explain to me when i was 14 years old why resigned from the Supreme Court. There is a justice with there is not even a kind of whisper. We have lost the ability for joseph welch, the attorney for the army, to say have you no decency, no sense of shame . We need to restore a kind of civic virtue and civic sense of character and have that be our destiny, not have the technological tales of media or whatever structures questions from online . I know we are almost at time, we have someone weve been talking about polarization. Quick tip, how can we respectfully disagree . [laughter] we used to be able to do that. It is a really important question. I think it does involve listening, understanding the reason behind somebody elses view and not taking not intrinsically believing any gain on the part of someone you disagree with is a direct loss of yours. There are ways to find solutions that are not zerosum. I agree. Even the question itself, the answer was in the question. In 1858, a congressman from South Carolina nearly beat someone to death on the floor of the u. S. Senate. His constituents sent him more canes to do more beating, so this is a human problem. It has always been there. How do you respect other peoples points of view . You respect their points of view, period. We get away from it all the time in every era ive been familiar with. What a wonderful conversation, but we are at time. Thank you for your insights and perspectives. We will close out the event. [applause] i really want to thank all of our speakers today for the insights and facts, the facts do matter. I want to most of all thank dr. Hayden, her advice to us it is up to all of us to do something if you want to strengthen democracy. I believe that with all of you. I appreciate everyone who joined us today in the room and across the country, i cannot think of a better way to celebrate the 75th anniversary. Have a lovely week. [applause]