Transcripts For CSPAN Forum Examines Relations Between Lawmakers And The Press 20170816

Barbara cochran, who is the president of the National Press Club Journalism institute will say a few welcoming remarks, and thank you, all, for coming. Ms. Cochran good morning, and thank you so much for being here today. I think the size of this crowd is a pretty good indication of the interest there is in finding ways for journalists and government officials to Work Together constructively to make sure that the public gets the information that we all need in a democracy. As kathy said, i am barbara cochran. Im professor of journalism and the director of the Washington Program of the Missouri School of journalism. And also the president of the National Press Club Journalism institute, which is the charitable and educational arm of the National Press club. This session is one of a series we have been doing this year to address the problems that have arisen, very dramatically, in washington for reporters this year and the threats facing a free press. This spring we discussed the challenges facing white house and other Government Agency reporters and also reporters who were covering local issues at the local level. We have spoken out along with other journalism organizations about efforts to block reporting about government, and we are preparing a curriculum for the fall that will give journalists the tools they need to report on money and politics, freedom of information procedures, disappearing databases, and much more. And in a few minutes you will hear about another initiative that we are announcing today. Our hope is that todays dialogue between journalists and government spokespeople will foster efforts to solve problems together. So that journalists can do their job of independently informing the American Public, and journalists and officials and work in an atmosphere of civility and security. Todays session we hope is a prelude to a broader summit this fall that will bring together government communicators and journalism people to make sure information keeps flowing to citizens of our country. Let me underscore that point. This is not about journalists, and it is not about the communicators. This is about the public. When it comes to democracy, journalists are the canaries in the coal mine. Havingubles they are getting access to information is the a precursor to those public will have. They are an early indicator of what the public is alarmed about. This is not a fight for a media access to information. It is a fight for Public Access. We welcome your interest and support. Our programs are produced without direct corporate support, and our funding comes from individuals, foundations, and a portion of National Press club member dues. You can make a difference by supporting this important work. I would like to introduce our moderator, kathy kiely. She serves as our first press freedom fellow for the Journalism Institute. With her deep experience and passion, she has been the perfect person to highlight the Critical Issues facing journalists and to work on solutions in a constructive way. Please welcome kathy and her distinguished panel. [applause] ms. Kiely thanks, barbara. I have a really great panel to introduce and we have a really big audience here. A few housekeeping matters. We do have wifi. It is eflclassroom, and the password is journalism, although we have cleverly put a 0 where the o in journalism is. Please write your questions down as you think about them and pass them toward barbara. We have people in the room who can help collect them. If you need to do that, we will get as many of them as possible today. Before we start, i want to say a few words about why we organized todays event. It might surprise some of you to know that we at the National Press club and its Journalism Institute are sick and tired of being, to borrow a memorable phrase, nattering nabobs of negativism. It seems almost every week since the beginning of this year we have had the issue of statement that runs along the lines of no, you cannot do that, no, you cannot just dismiss news that you do not like as fake, no, you cannot throw a reporter out of a public building, no, you cannot throw a reporter. [laughter] ms. Kiely i could go on and on but what good would that do for us or the country we all care about . On the other hand, we cannot do nothing. One thing you will hear about today is a new survey developed by the National Press Club Journalism institute and the media law resource center. It will enable journalists to report data and sources that are being taken offline. The information we gather will help support a press Freedom Tracker launched this week by a Broad Coalition of journalism organizations, many of them represented here today. Incredibly, the United States of america has now become one of the countries where we have to start toting up physical assaults on journalists. We are worried. We know the hostility we are experiencing in washington is having an impact well beyond the beltway. We know that because it is making it harder for journalists at the state and local level to get information and we know that because this is the third in a series of panels that the National Press Club Journalism institute has sponsored this year on problems of press access. It is the first, however, where we have included panelists who are not journalists. We are widening the circle because we think it is important for all of us engaged in this participatory sport we call democracy to Start Talking with each other rather than at each other. And what better place than the National Press club . For more than a century, it has been a Gathering Spot for people who make the news and people who cover the news. Our members include journalists and communicators. And i defy anyone has ever been to our bar, festooned with newspaper cartoons and an old shutdown notice from the prohibition, to call us a den of elitists. So briefly, in alphabetical order, i will introduce our panelists. Please hold applause or other emotional outbursts until i have gotten through the list, and i will ask all of them to wave when i say their name. So brendan buck. Counselor to House Speaker paul ryan. John donnelly. A reporter for cq rollcall. John heads the military reporters and Editors Association and the National Press clubs press freedom team. Jeff hermes. Deputy director of the media law resource center. Billy house, reporter for bloomberg who chairs the Standing Committee of congressional correspondence. Carolyn lukensmeyer. Executive director of the National Institute of the civil discourse. Mike mccurry, press secretary for bill clinton. He got to know all about jousting with reporters. Senate historian don ritchie, whose many books include three on the history of the Washington Press corps. And last but not least, jennifer talhelm, who can see things from both sides because she was a reporter before she became a Congressional Communications director. Jennifer now works for senator tom udall of new mexico. I would also like to acknowledge our capacity crowd here, because it is also full of noteworthies. We have representatives of press organizations here, including the committee to protect journalists, reporters without borders, the Reporters Committee for freedom of the press. We also have people who work on capitol hill and in a number of embassies. There are two classes of journalism students, one from American University in washington, and another led by former National Press Club President rick dunham, from beijing. Your presence says something important. How we treat each other in Washington Matters far outside of washington. Im going to start with billy house. Billy was elected by the many print reporters who cover capitol hill to head the Standing Committee of correspondents. A lot of people do not know that reporters have a Standing Committee on capitol hill. The press is embedded in the institution in a way that i think is pretty healthy, so maybe you can talk about what the role of the committee is and how your constituents see things on the hill. The hill has always been open. Is it still that way . Mr. House we are the Credential Committee for the print press at the capital. This is an interesting time. There is a lot of frustration in the capital from the two wings, one party that controls both wings of the capital. Their better way agenda has sputtered a little in the First Six Months of this session. Health care has sputtered and things have not gone their way. Against this backdrop of the frustration the capitol is too crowded. There are too many reporters, they are in the hallways, blocking things. We have to do something about this. This may not come from the speaker or the majority leader himself on the floor, but this comes through their system, their people. It is against this backdrop there has been tension about where reporters can go in the capital, the access they should have to members of congress, many of whom do not do town halls anymore and apparently do not want to be asked questions after they leave votes or go to votes either, in the u. S. Capitol. Against this backdrop there are real spatial and fiscal plan problems. There are certain chokepoints in the Capitol Building that create crowding and transportation and Movement Problems for lawmakers. It is those two things were wrestling with, as the credentialing committee, a, freer access, and, b, making sure that access continues despite real problems in the building itself. Ms. Kiely why should people care if reporters are able to go up to a member of congress and ask a question . Mr. House first of all, as i said, many of these members are not talking at home. Theyre not doing town halls. They are doing teletown halls where they can control the audience. So when they come here, it is one point of contact for reporters that can ask them some tough questions. Beyond that, despite all the talk about regular process in committee, this particular congress has been adept at holding a lot of closeddoor meetings, trotting out legislation from those closeddoor meetings without public discussion about what is in it. Even going to the floor and voting on items in which members of the public and the press have not been able to convey any details about. To ask why members of the press are not outside those closed doors so they can tell somebody what is going to be voted on, is a very fair question. We need to be doing that stuff. Ms. Kiely brendan, want to rebut . Mr. Buck yeah, i do. Those are disappointing comments. I would challenge anybody to find anywhere in washington where there is as much access to people doing things with power than the capitol. The speaker of the house holds two press conferences every week. There was a lobby on the house floor where reporters are allowed and members come to talk. There is unprecedented access to basically anybody. And i find that frustrating that you would suggest that there is an effort to crack down on press. In fact, we work very closely with the galleries. And i can speak from the time since Speaker Boehner took over. We have done nothing but liberalize access in the capitol. There is more access today than there ever has been. There is more information flow than there ever has been. The capitol is one of the places where it works very well. Most members of congress get along very well with the press on capitol hill. Most good reporters do not find it hard to get information on capitol hill. Very little is a secret, and we like it that way. We think that is an important part of what we do, an important part of the culture. There are reporters everywhere, and we would not want it any other way. It is part of the lifeblood of what we do. We in the Speakers Office do everything to accommodate that. I am sorry if some reporters are not able to get what they want all the time, but it is hardly for lack of access. In one of my old jobs i worked for Speaker Boehner and my job was to deal with the White House Press, reporters who covered president obama. And to a person, anybody who has covered the white house, even in the obama years, would tell you covering capitol hill is far superior to the white house. You have far more access. The white house keeps a tight lid on information flow. I ran into a wellknown reporter just this week who was coming to cover the hill for a week, was sent over to cover something they do not usually cover. She was ecstatic to come back to the hill, because you can interact with people, ask senators or members of Congress Questions at any time. Not everybody is going to answer every time, but they are there. They are accessible. There is nowhere else like it in washington that that is the case. Ms. Kiely before i let billy rebut the rebuttal, i want to turn to jennifer because you are from the senate side, and you have been a reporter, you have done the job that billy has done, done the job that brendan is doing. What do you think is happening . There were incidents on the senate side where people were asked not to tape interviews with people. Can you talk about what you think is happening there, and are you comfortable with the level of access among politicians and reporters . Ms. Talhelm i see it from both sides here. I have worked as a reporter, so i understand the frustrations. Journalismf herd way you are relegated to a few locations in the building where the offices are where you have the ability to stop a member ms. Kiely can you turn your mic up a little bit . Ms. Talhelm in response to questions about pretty important and the issues, especially when you are talking about big pieces of legislation that affect most of the country, health care being a good example, where the details have mostly been hidden from the public. And the public has a lot to gain or lose from the decisions that get made. I see it from that perspective. You are talking about a lot of people on very tight schedules. When you are running past a phalanx of three dozen reporters on your way to a vote, it is very difficult to get from point a to point b. There have been some incidents. This is coming in a backdrop of pretty unprecedented hostility toward the media. That raises hackles on both sides. That is definitely part of the conversation. We maybe will get to that at a different time in this conversation. But i think if you are in journalism, hearing that kind of hostility, experiencing almost physical hostility when somebody is blocking your access, i think you are bound to get at least suspicious, probably with reason about why you are being blocked from that information. And i think that is the reason we are here, isnt it . To talk about whether something can actually be done to prevent bad feelings on both sides. Ms. Kiely don, can you put this in historic perspective for us . You have written books about the relationship of Capitol Hill Press Corps to the politicians. How does this Current Situation fit into that history, or is this really unprecedented . Mr. Ritchie i have been asked when did the relations between the press and politicians become problematic . I have definitively traced it back to the First Congress and the washington administration. [laughter] mr. Ritchie washington was frustrated with the press and met with many members who declared them to be the single most misrepresented member of congress right from the start. What has happened is reporters need wellplaced sources. Politicians need the press to get their word out. But they are often angry about the way the press reports it because they do not control that. There have been efforts throughout time to find some way for some kinds of rules of behavior that both sides can live with. There are patterns in which these rules are established, and some new form of technology disrupts it. In the 1840s, the telegraph came and sped up news. In the 1890s, it was mass magazines. They brought in muckrakers. In the 1920s, radio. In the 1950s, it was television. In the 1980s, it was cable television. In the 1990s, it was the internet, and the 21st century, it is cell phones where people can record video, anyplace. So senators have felt themselves ambushed in the halls of congress, whereas once there were rules as to where the cameras could be. And usually what has happened when there has been this disruption is the reporters sit down with politicians to work out a new set of rules. In 1980 one of the rules was to treat the Standing Committee of correspondents. Were the only government who decides who gets a press pass to cover the National Legislature and who still run the press galleries. But that was a response to problems that they were having. And so i suppose the reassuring thing i can say at this point is that it is periodically disruptive, but there usually is a counter response in which people figure out how we can live with this new form of media, and we are still grappling with how we deal with the iphone. Ms. Kiely i want to turn to mike mccurry, because, mike, you have argued if there is such a thing as too much access, you and republican counterpart, ari fleischer, wrote that White House Press briefings should not be on television. Talk a little bit about since were talking about technology and how it changes things, can you talk about why you feel that way . Mr. Mccurry lets start with a general observation. The irony is that both sides of this equation presumably want the same thing. They want the public to have access to information because the politician believe he or she is doing great things in the name of the nation, and they just want that reported, and reporters want access to information that they can transmit to the public. But it gets screwed up when the agendas are different. What the politician wants to talk about is different from what the press wants to focus on, and that becomes the source of tension. And i think how to deal with that tension is probably what this conversation is. On the specific point of the briefing, this is most of our participants here are interested in congressional media relations. It is different at the white house, and brendan made the point. The white house is a much more controlled environment because news from across all of the federal government has to funnel through that chokepoint, and it is difficult for a white house to stay focused on the things that matter most to the white house and the president when you have the responsibility of answering questions across the broad panoply of things that happen. But on the specific point of the briefing, and this is the point i want to make i believe that helped institute broadcast coverage of the White House Briefing in 1995 the briefing is a briefing. It is not a news event in and of itself. It should not be one. It is an opportunity for reporters to hold accountable those in the white house. It is an opportunity for the white house to deliver the message it wants to deliver on the president s behalf on a given day. That information should be checked against other sources. Reporters ought to report. They ought to take whatever the white house says with some grain of salt and then go talk to people on the hill, others, and compile the story that then present an accurate picture of what the issue is, so the American People can understand that issue in context. When you have live televised briefings of the White House Daily briefing, it turns into what we just saw just a day or so ago of just this food fight between reporters who posture for the camera, press spokesman on behalf of the president who have to respond, and it does not serve the publics interest. I think to partly deescalate some of the tension in this relationship, it ought to be an embargoed briefing. No problem having cameras and broadcast there, but require the reporters to go out after the briefing is over to report on what was said and may be to test out some of the information against other places, other sources, so the public gets a more thorough account. Ms. Kiely jeff, you are a media lawyer. What is your take on that . And what isork, your take on the general situation . Do you think press access is where it should be, where it should not be . Talk about the questionnaire you helped us build. Mr. Hermes sure. Why dont i start with the last question. The press tracker, which we have developed together, is a resource which allows journalists and others who have encountered issues with gaining access to information, whether a database that has disappeared, some other block in access to data information, access to somebody you are trying to talk to, to submit a brief report on it incident to the database so we can compile that information and build a record of trends in information. Pretty muchactly is pressons access where it should be, are there systemic problems that should be addressed . From the perspective of a First Amendment lawyer, i work with a media law resource center, and our primary job is to step back from daytoday fights on particular legal issues affecting the press and affecting the First Amendment and strategize, look at what the broader patterns of behavior are, issues that are arising more systematically, develop strategies and responses, and we number our membership over 130 Media Outlets across the firmsy and over 200 law rightsrst amendment to protect free speech rights across the country. It is difficult to do that if we do not have the data to base our work on. And so with the resource like that denial of access tracker, we can see patterns, we can see specific situations in which reporters are running into difficulty gaining access to information for the benefit of the public. We can see whether there are legal issues underlying those problems such that we may orient our resources to equip lawyers to go to court. We may see issues where it is less of a legal issue and more of a policy issue but where we can work with politicians, start to work with Public Advocates on advancing media rights through policy and lobbying. And so this is very exciting for us in terms of the things we have been seeing. Certainly, access to information out of the executive branch has been something my organization has been focused on very carefully over the last several months, looking at the number of foia access suits that have been filed, looking at the interactions with the press, things like the legal implications of the difference between telling somebody they cannot take a photograph and telling somebody they have to delete a photograph they have taken. Those two things might sound very similar, but to a First Amendment lawyer, we recognize you can actually have a First Amendment right to broadcast or publish a photo you do not have a First Amendment right to take. You can edge toward issues like restraint in ways you do not expect. If there is a pattern where we see the dialogue between the press and the government shifting away from limiting access to places to blocking a publication that has been gathered, that is a red flag. Ms. Kiely i think mike made an interesting point when he said so much information has to funnel through the white house. I wonder why that is. John, you can talk about your own experience. You are at an agency, executive branch agency, trying to get information. Tell us what happened, and how has that compared . You have been a reporter for a long time. How does that compare with your past experience . Mr. Donnelly this is at the federal communications commission, and i do not usually cover them. Covered offense. Defense. And what happened to me there bears out what brendan said about congress is one of the best places to find information and we are used to be able to walk up to people in a hallway and ask them a question. Billy is right that there is a growing tension there, especially with more and more reporters responding to the latest tweet from down the street reporters responding to the latest tweet down the street. I was at the fcc and i did not want to ask my question in the press conference because i do not want to tip off other reporters, which is something that happens. We do not want to tell the world what we are working on. I was hoping to catch one of the commissioners offstage, but apparently that is not allowed there, because as i tried to ask one of the commissioners a question, security guards and in back to me up against the wall and pinned me against the wall for several seconds, and not long thereafter they required me to leave the building. So i was not thrown, but i was thrown out. A lot more worse situations that reporters have confronted around the world than what happened to me. It illustrates a certain mindset. It is in contrast to what happened on capitol hill. The fcc chairman later wrote a pair of senators, udall and hassan and gave a misleading version of what happened, claiming i was trying to access restricted areas, which is not true, and if they perceive that i was trying to do that, then that is their Real Security problem that they cannot tell the difference between a reporter asking a question and somebody who is a real threat. Ms. Kiely and you were wearing credentials . Mr. Donnelly yes. This very suit. Buth is not a credential just to let you know that i was not looking like somebody was going to tackle somebody. I had my press pass. In order to entry this area, it is a public meeting, you have to go through a metal detector, you have to have your i. D. Recorded, etc. When i asked them why they can meet against the wall, they asked, why didnt you ask your question in the press conference . They knew i was reporter, so theres no confusion. Ms. Kiely carolyn, i will come to you to wrap up this round, cause youre the peacemaker here, and your organization was founded after congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot, and i think it is important to note that the hostility that we are talking about in the deterioration of our political discourse affects more than just reporters. Another member of congress was shot. It is important for us to have civil discourse. You just listened to a bunch of people vent and give different accounts. Of how they think things should work. You have worked before with reporters and editors in ohio. Can you talk about what might be a way forward here. Ms. Lukensmeyer i think i want to put in one piece of information about how the public sees this issue, not only between government officials and reporters, but between themselves and government officials and reporters. A person has been doing a civility in america poll for seven years, and in this last release, just january 2017, fully 75 of americans, red states, blue states, purple states, believe incivility is a crisis in america and believes it is reducing our standing in the world. And a word that i think needs to come into this conversation when were adding the public the issue of trust, and the trust of the public in government institutions, and the trust of the public in the media. And most of you know this, but both have fallen to lows that had not been seen since gallup started asking those questions after world war ii. There are bright spots in terms of what can be done going forward. In october 2015, the National Institute of civil discourse convened in ohio, because it is a swing state, because it was the year before the president ial election. We brought together a little over 50 people, a third of whom were journalists, a third of whom were elected officials, and some of the ohio house delegation was present, and also civic citizen leaders. And the topic that was taken on was, what was possible for us, the people present, to do about negative campaigning in the president ial election . And a project that came out of that event or that gathering was a decision of 14 journalistic outlets in ohio to shift to what they called citizencentric coverage of the campaign. They started by having the ray Bliss Institute at the university of akron do some deep tradeoff polling with the public on the key issues facing the country immigration, health care, tax reform so they were sitting with real protocols from the public about what did the public want to hear from the candidates . And the agreement was made, whether a sunday morning talk show or a blogger on the internet, or whether it was an editorial board, that when the candidates came to ohio, they would start with asking the citizens questions. And in terms of one of the threats to journalism is the change of business model. Another piece that was revolutionary about this work was that all 14 outlets and agreed to share resources. So the Cincinnati Team did the deep work on jobs and the economy. The akron team did the deep run on immigration. And they shared their footage and research. This was so successful in ohio from both the journalists point of view and the citizens point of view that this project is now being carried forward. A Senior Editor at an akron newspaper has left that position and is leading a project called your voice ohio. You can look at it on the web and track this work. They have now increased the number of journalistic outlets participating in this to 25. The fundamental reason that the journalists chose to make this leap was how shocked they were and they were sitting face to face with all these leaders, people they interviewed on a regular basis, and what it fundamentally came down to was even those pretty sophisticated, educated members of the public and consumers of media fundamentally no longer trusted journalists and the media. The seed of this was, given what journalism is, given what we want to do in terms of making sure the public is with an understanding of what is happening in our country, a they really set about to say we can as a set of institutional outlets in ohio really move forward, bringing dialogue with the citizens into what we do so that what we report is more directly connected to what the public feels they need to understand. I think this is an experiment well worth watching across the country that has valuable insights that could be brought into the National Perspective as well. Ms. Kiely thank you. Well worth repeating at the national level. I would like to pick up something what you said and what mike said and ask the press secretaries to jump in, because you talked about people wanting and there being success covering substantive issues. And mike talked about there being a tension when the press is covering Something Different or wants to put out a different story than the politicians want. We in the press think we are right, but from the press secretaries point of view, what are the kinds of stories you think the press is not covering that we should be covering . You want me to go with that one . Ms. Kiely go ahead. The speaker does a little thing where he asks the audience to raise your hand. If you remember that james comey came to the capitol and raised his hand. How many people remember that same day we passed wall street reform and nobody raised their hand. I understand the nature of the press fascination with what is going on in the white house these days. I would argue there are a lot more interesting stories on capitol hill and resources are beingdevoted to fear devoted, which sounds strange does there are so many capitol hill reporters right now. I would argue most of them are not there to cover what were doing legislatively. There is a lot less interest in that than is warranted, and there is a lot less interesting things going on there. I understand the fascination. I wish it would be in smaller doses. But i would make a plug for investing in your Capitol Hill Press Corps, keeping people there. One of the challenges we have is there is an immense amount of turnover, and we get people to swoop in to cover health care, a complicated issue. People crowd the capitol cover something for a few months and leave. The best reporters who understand capitol hill had been there for a while. It is the people who get the rhythm and the way things work. There are so many inputs in capitol hill. There are so many things going on. It is easy to miss it, not get what matters, to not put things in proper perspective. What is a real issue and what is not . What is out of the ordinary and what is not . That is a huge thing. People come in and they had been on the dress code story, for example, something that had been going on for decades. Somebody who had just come to capitol hill for the first time noticed it ms. Kiely the dress code story . Mr. Buck there is an unwritten dress code that does run the capitolon not in the complex but in the floor of the house and the speakers lobby, and over time it had been determined that sleeveless dresses were not appropriate. It is not a rule we had set in place ms. Kiely because the speaker never wears them . [laughter] mr. Buck exactly. We had endured and endless brief because people were suggesting unfairly that paul ryan had put in place a dress code that cracked down on a dress code of what women could wear. It was totally baseless. I assure you that he did not know what the dress code was. It was not something he paid a lot of attention to. Yet someone who came in and was there for the first time, and it was interesting to what reporters who had been a long time around defending us. We are not used to getting defended. I use that as an example to please invest people in capitol hill, it is important, but it takes time, it takes time understanding the rhythms and how things work, and what is important and what is not when there are so many things coming at you, so many issues that are being confronted at once, so many people who want to tell you something, and some people no know more than others, and it comes with experience, and i think there is a need for people to cover the hill, but stay on the hill. Ms. Kiely let jennifer Say Something, and i will come back to you. Ms. Talhelm i have a feeling you were going to Say Something similar. I would definitely agree with the principle that brendan was talking about. About the need to were talking about complex topics and it takes time to understand it, it takes experience. Ms. Kiely and is there frustration . Ms. Talhelm absolutely. Theres another aspect of this that plays into all of the points that have been made, and that is the real decline, and while there are so many ways to share information and tells stories, and the rise up on rise of Online Publications has changed the way business is done on the hill, there is also a steep decline in the number of regional journalists who are covering members of congress, which is part of the frustration. Members of congress are trying to increase the number of diversity in the stories out there. Certainly, your frustration that we feel in trying to explain what my senator udall is doing on the hill, but was going on and how that affects our state, which is different from every other state, and every state is in the same circumstance. Maybe billy can talk about the numbers, but when i started as a journalist on the hill, which was a while ago now, there were probably two newspapers per major media market, and i was covering arizona, colorado, new mexico, utah. There were two for denver, two for albuquerque, two for phoenix. That number has been cut in half, and more. Another aspect is i wanted to make sure that got brought into the conversation is the fact that we have gotten away from the regular order of doing business, which used to be you write a bill, you have a hearing, you pass the bill through the committee, it goes to the floor. We used to pass appropriation bills in regular order, and each of these steps along the regular order was an opportunity to ask questions and learn information and share that information with the public. A good bit of that has gone by the wayside. We have not passed appropriations by regular order in years. Health care legislation is being written behind closed doors and being brought for a vote after the vote has already started. And all of that plays into the conversation were having about journalist access. Ms. Kiely you have raised an interesting point, both of you have, and i want to let billy respond, but i want to ask you a question, billy. You and i started as regional reporters, and that meant that we covered a delegation of five or six or eight members of congress, we asked them questions about what they were doing, we wrote about the bills they were interested in. And i just wonder, to get to brendans points, and maybe the journalists can jump in here, if we were to go to cover a committee meeting, if there were such a thing, would our editors accept that story . Would the public read the story . I mean, are we at a point now where the public will accept a media diet that has some whole grains in it, or are we just going for skittles . I invite anybody to comment on that question, because it is a commercial issue, right . You have to have readers him and are people going to read and watch that stuff . Absolutely, if you are covering regional issue, a power plant regulatory issue forth the next, if youre going to talk a certain senators rise in the system, all of those things would be read by the local paper. But aty be surprising least with the Standing Committee, the number of credentials have not gone up or down in over a decade which may be surprising in the age of the internet. That they ared is showing up at the capital. Where the Cleveland Plain Dealer may have had 10 reporters in washington, one covering agriculture, one covering defense, that does not happen. Those regional bureaus do not exist anymore. The number of credentials are the same. They are now showing up at the capital more often. There is a reason for that. That is where the news is. The powers that be want to overhaul the health care system. They want to flip the tax system around. I would not fault reporters clogging the hallways in the u. S. Capitol. I would say there is a relevant reason for that. I agreed with a lot of what he said. On the dress code, the real story. The speaker of the house went to the u. S. House floor to admonish members that they would have he would keep an eye on them and they better watch and abide by the dress code and other rules of the house floor. The steady Committee Received a notice from the protocol officer at the Speakers Office that that includes the speakers lobby. For theint of access press. In other words, the dress code would be enforced and focused on for reporters. Ryand not see speaker looking people over, looking their clothes over. Personnel, security u. S. Capitol police being turned into disco bouncers. From their views of what were the right shoes, the right dresses, the right anything, belts. This, there were rules and rules written down. When rules are not written down, they may have been practiced for years. Older reporters may look at younger reporters and say, weve been here. That has been the rule. But i dont fault the younger, newer reports in washington for saying, where are those rules . Can i read them . And that is exactly what a number of them did. And as a result, we find the Speakers Office now saying they had nothing to do with this. I think, i think that raises a good point. I want to get over to the senate side too. I know we were asked at the National Press Club Journalism institute to do a statement when there was an incident on the senate side where reporters were asked, told they had to go to a committee before they could interview people in the hallway, which had been going on for years. People said, oh, this is always been the rule. I had worked on the capital for years and i didnt know that. I went on to the Senate Rules Committee site, i found a lot of rules, but i didnt find that rule. Oh, it is not there. It is another rule that has not been written down. So i wonder, maybe don can jump in and tell us where do, these rules come from . And why shouldnt they be, if were going to have these kind of rules, and i get it, i dont think people should wear tank tops to cover congress, but what, cant we do this better where it is going to be a little more open . Well there are some written rules. The house for instance, there is rule that you cant wear a hat in the chamber. And a poor clerk of the house had to tell bell abzug couldnt wear her trademark hat and got an earful. On senate side, most dress codes are informal. Senior senators would take jon i junior senators aside to say that a yellow suit is not appropriate for a senator, things like that. There used to be a rule about, unwritten rule about women not wearing pantsuits in the chamber. And in the women that worked at the desk complained. At the time they were only two women senators. On a saturday, when senators work on saturdays, the senators wore clothes appropriate on golf course, they arranged for one saturday and barbara and nancy , and every woman who worked in wear pants where on the floor. No man had any nerve to suggest this was not appropriate. Many of written rules are as potent as unwritten ones. Depends where they enforce them, and they enforce them after everybody has forgotten what is the pattern on the hill. Go ahead. I did not mean to suggest the reporter was wrong in questioning the rules. In fact, we followed up a week later and changed the rules. That is not my point. My point was that people took what they saw and suggested that this was a rule that paul ryan had written and was now enforcing it in an unprecedented way. It would be wrong to suggest it wasnt always enforced. I dont challenge anybody for questioning the rules and to continue the story, the rules were changed as a result of that. And thats fine. I just wish people would take a little more time in this day and age to put things in a little more perspective, and not make everything out to be an unprecedented attack. Its not. Lets Work Together. We work really closely with the galleries, despite what you may hear, you know, we work really closely with billys gallery. We work really closely with the radiotv gallery. We want to be partners. We want to have sober conversations about what are rules that make sense for everybody. We have no interest in blocking access to anyone. That would be counter to way things work on the hill. We want there to be a vibrant press corps there. We do. We just want to make sure it is safe. That someone will not get a concussion by camera running down the hallway and things like that. There have been, it would, there have never been, in my experience, in my seven or eight years in Speakers Office, never been any effort to curtail media access. If anything, we have liberalized the rules. Now, there are issues that rise up. And we have to sit down with the galleries, we talk things out with everybody, we never do anything without that input. That is important part of the how we do things is working together, talking together. You know, sitting down and understanding where everybody is coming from. Do people think that the the speed of information traveling now has altered the equation at all . And is is there any way to cope with that . I mean, do you find people are working under such Competitive Pressure that its changed the relationship between reporters and people they cover . Kathy, i would like to take that. And i would also like to talk about the senate rule you are talking about, the incident in the senate. I think the rule was about the, there is a standing rule having cameras in the hallway. You are supposed to have permission and cameras can only be placed in certain places in the Senate Office buildings. I think that the issue that came up in that incident was that it was a rule that had basically been bent most of the time, and reporters had shaped the way they were doing business based on the way the rule had been interpreted and enforced. And and then you were having a situation, i believe part of the concern, and i never, i did inquire with the rules committee and i never heard back why that rule suddenly had been enforced, but my understanding there was a concern about outside cameras and question of who is a journalist and who is not. What are they using video for, and is it legitimate journalism purpose or not. That is good question for billy to start bringing up. I believe that the rule enforcement was dropped by the middle of the day. And things went back to the way they normally had been. But i think it is right for journalists, my senator udall was among other senators who raised questions about why is that rule suddenly selectively enforced . And if it is being selectively enforced, what information is it that you are trying to hide exactly . So i think it is a healthy thing for journalists to question, to ask about rules, why they are enforced and when they are enforced and dress code in speakers lobby. To get the questions you were asking, i would have to say that is one of my biggest frustrations. As a journalist that comes to you in a hurry on complicated issue, i certainly have been in a situation and i have said, ok, you have half understanding the issue youre writing about. I would like to spend time with you explaining what you it is that youre writing about. In one particular case i can think of, there was a lost a lot of context i wanted to share would shape the end reporting and even question whether the person had a story or not. The person was on a deadline. Whether they wanted to go home or not, i will not make a judgment but they definitely didnt sit and take the time to understand the story. I felt like the story was wholly inaccurate. I think that happens quite a bit. There is a rush for to be first over and i think that sometimes takes precedent over being right. I think that is an issue that journalists have always had to struggle with, but in the days of breaking news by twitter, it is a much more serious issue now. Kathy . Yes. May i comment on that because i think it is very fundamentally important point. There is so much news and information in washington that needs to get to the public, but we constantly see our daily diet of news hijacked by whatever the breaking news crawl is that is on cable television, and that is driven by this Competition Model that says, weve got to beat the competition to the the story, it is getting the scoop, getting the headline first. That is an economic model that does not serve journalism particularly well. We are talking about the decline in the number of regional bureaus here in washington, the number of newspapers that maintain washington bureaus that has sharply declined. One concern i have is, when i first came to washington in the 1970s, most of our major federal agencies, Labor Department, hhs, had full time reporters covering agencies there on the premises. That is largely discontinued because the storyline has to go through either capitol hill or the white house. So i dont know what can be done about it, but if there was an economic model for the news enterprise that was based on substance and thoroughness, rather than speed, i think the public would be better served. And if it takes the New York Times or the Washington Post an extra day or two to get that thorough story everyone relies upon, but the public knows, great, now i have gotten a source that i know i can trust, carolyn made a very good point, only 24 of the American People trust the government in washington to get it right. And the number that trusts the media is even lower than that. It is probably about half that. And i think that is because people know that theyre not being served information they can use and act upon. They are getting those psychodrama stories that are titillating, i have experience with that [laughter] and they are not getting the deep reporting that is really about things that affect their lives. There are regulatory agencies, many are getting blown up now by the current administration, there is severe consequences in the daily lives of the American People. There is probably very little journalism in and around that subject taking place in the city today. So, i think maybe we have to look more deeply at what the economic model is that will sustain viable profitmaking news organizations. John . Real quick. I think mike is right, there are far too many titillating and too many stories of possibly questionable veracity. On other hand, i think most of the news youre seeing is accurate. Maybe it is not complete, but most of it is accurate. But we are definitely not talking about a lot of important issues we should be talking about. Were about to have a holocaust in africa. Millions of people will die. Nobody is asking with the American Government is going to do about that. One thing i do not think has been brought up that i have noticed here is the rise of ideological news outlets, you know who they are, interested in pushing a certain agenda. And if they happen to tell the truth in the process, that is great. And that is a huge problem, not only for democracy, but for this is also a problem for democracy, the trust that people have in journalism. One of the reasons people dont trust news organizations, is because they do not trust the tainted information, not all the time. So you have a substantial portion of the population that believes the news media is too leftwing and a substantial portion that believes it is too rightwing. That is a large reason why we are held in low esteem. We see in terms of the public dealing with each other on these issues. Because they are dealing with different sets of facts, and it becomes difficult to have a civil conversation between people on different sides of an issue. We are focusing, as we should be, on the terms of the relationship between journalists and government, but something to Pay Attention to that is equally a threat to our democracy, not since reconstruction have we seen the kind of judgment from one american about another american. The flashpoint was, who voted for trump . Who voted for hillary . This is almost nine months after that election and americans are still vilifying and demonizing each other for the differences in their vote, or the differences, on immigration and differences on health care. And there is a direct link on where they get their facts. So when we work with the public, we have to do a tremendous amount of work to introduce enough information that is actually shared information that everyone present will agree is factual. I may not agree with it, but it is factual. That is getting tougher to do with the public. I am going to turn to just jeff next, but i want to remind everybody that we are going toward the home stretch, if you have questions, do not be shy. You do not look like shy people. We want to hear from you as well is from the panelists. We are ready to accept them if you are ready to pass them up on the cards. Jeff . I want to touch upon another data point, in terms of shifts between the public and the press, one thing my organization tracks are new defamation cases. And i particularly against the media, although in broader context as well, and one thing we see is a spike in more defamation cases against the press. And it is too early to say there is a causal relationship but it is something we are concerned about and worried this is a side effect of worsening relations between the press and the public. And it is something that we are looking at in different ways of addressing, and trying to heal the rift to the extent we can. I want to introduce an elephant in the room, or not in the room but nearby, don talked a lot about technology and we talked about how technology has changed relations between the press and the people we cover. But what about trump . I think jennifer alluded to the fact, and brendan alluded to the fact that reporters tend to be on a hair trigger now. We see things as a direct threat to our First Amendment rights and our ability to get information to the public, but how much of that, and don maybe you can talk about it, and billy can talk about this phenomenon of an ideological press. How different is this . Have we been through anything like this before, and is history tell us anything about how we might get through this . There are president s who disliked the press more than other president s. In the 19th century, Grover Cleveland hated the press so much the cabinet offices would officers would not be seen walking with a reporter. He was followed by william mckinley, the first to open the white house and have a space for reporters to gather. Herbert hoover despised the press and made it extremely difficult, he actually got some reporters fired during his presidency. He was followed by Franklin Roosevelt who opened everything up to the press and was beloved by the press. Richard nixon hated the press with a passion. In some respects, he was followed by Ronald Reagan who figured out how to, being ideologically further to the right than richard nixon, being the press corps sort of liberal at the time, reagan figured a way to be a sunnier president to some degree then nixon. We have these sort of actions and reactions. And right now we are back in a presidency that really hates the Mainstream Press. So one can only assume, whoever runs to succeed him is going to try to do the opposite of whatever this administration is doing. You agree with that . Yes, i think every president gets frustrated and exasperated with the press corps, but the belligerency we see this president and his attitudes towards the press is rather unprecedented, certainly in the modern era and it really is fundamentally dangerous. I think the reaction from the press corps has been justifiable. I think during the campaign period, the press got mesmerized early by just how frankly strange some of the things donald trump was saying. They extended enormous amounts of coverage to him, gave him an audience that probably helped him secure the base vote he needed to win the primaries and the general election. There has been a counter reaction. I have never seen the Mainstream Press collectively seem to make a judgment that the current sitting president is not qualified to be in office. That is what they have done. Their coverage everyday reflects and will continue to reflect the general attitude in newsrooms in cities around the country that we dont have the president that this nation needs. And that is wildly different from the way things have worked in the past. I throw that out knowing that is fairly provocative, but i would be interested if anyone else senses that. That is provocative. I want to ask brendan, what does that do in terms of your members of the president s party, how does that affect their view of the reporters who cover them, and has that poisoned the well . I go back to what i said at the beginning, coverage and relations between members of the media on capitol hill are still largely pretty good. I think what you see, the house, as it has always been, members are a reflection of the country and a crosssection and you will have members who dislike the media more than others and that is not necessarily new, either, but generally when you are confronted with people and work closely with people you get along with them because you know them better. So i think relations are still pretty good. You see more that probably a little uptick in media hostility among members in general, not in an unprecedented way in my experience, as mike alluded to, theres a lot of attacks on republicans in general, feeding frustration, but generally, guys get along pretty well with the press. Jennifer . For the most part, i agree with brendan. On the whole, good. If you are talking about individuals, individual members of congress with individual reporters, i think there is mostly everybody recognizes everybody has a job to do, we try to accommodate each other and make the daytoday work. Senator udall got involved in this. That is why i am here. In march, starting in march, after hearing the number, we put together a list of incidents combined with constant fake news attacks and culminating in the media as the enemy of the people. Sat down with us and said, look, if i dont stand up and speak out on behalf of the media to do its job, i wont feel good about myself as somebody who values Public Access, and as a public servant, i am not going to go through the entire list, i did it with you, but bring it with me, it included incidents where reporters were physically manhandled, thrown out of meetings they had normally been allowed access to, that is a really concerning thing. I looked at don to tell us if it is a new thing, it is a more hostile environment. There have certainly been periods of hostility, only two occasions in the 19th century were reporters were held prisoner to reveal the source of the leaks. They leaked treaties that had not been realeased yet. And in neither case did the reporters admit in fact, their newspapers doubled their salaries for every day they were in captivity. There was really no incentive. [laughter] where did they hold them . They took over a committee room. Wow, dont give brendan any ideas. Interesting events. They did not work. At various times, the senate, fired the executive clerk, they thought the secrets of executive sessions were leaking, the senators where the source, there have been times where members beat up reporters on capitol grounds. That was a century ago. That is not the normal group. Route. The tendency has always been to cool things down. Once the relationship gets as hostile as it is. It is a nobodys interest, politicians nor the press, to have perpetual hostility. What about this point about an ideological press . The same number of credentials and more people on the hill, because thats where the news is. We heard mike make a good point that we are not at the Labor Department or environmental and protection agency, or at the Agriculture Department, like we used to be. I had a friend who won two Pulitzer Prizes covering ag issues in the Agriculture Department for the des moines register, that would be hard to imagine now. Are we seeing, billy, are these people who are credentialed, are they ideological credentials . Are these activists getting a press pass . How do you police them . First of all, with regard to credentialing, we dont look at content. It may be surprising but we dont. We look at there is a pay wall between attempts to raise money or advertising revenue and their editorial content, so we dont delve into their slant. But there has been an increase niche websites, organizations that have a slant one way or the other. We dont, as the committee, have never in the decades looked into content. This is an issue, i think, it is important for people to understand how difficult the rise of Digital Media has made it because, as don said, the rules have changed, and the technology has changed, and i remember when i was on the Standing Committee people were saying, well, it was just the dawn of the internet age and people were saying, how do we decide of someone get the credential . Someone said it will have to be someone already affiliated with an established organization and i said, why dont want to be the i do not want to be the person that stand in the way of the next i f stone which really dates me, but he was an independent journalist who cranked out his own newsletter. He was a blogger before blogs existed. So i think it makes it very difficult trying to determine who gets a credential, dont you think . Absolutely, and there is a lot of crosspollination, a lot of movement between various new entities. Reporters moved around quite a lot. Do you agree with brendans point . You and i and John Donnelly covered capitol hill for a long time but we may be exceptions. Are you seeing a turnover . Do you think that has affected the way capitol hill is covered . Yes. I dont want to sound like im talking about when ice cream was a nickel and that sort of thing but that is definitely true. Whether or not in the long run that is a good or bad thing or we see more fresh eyes, what we are doing, that is a good thing, or whether lack of experience or lack of acumen, even the rules of the processes kind of hinder some of the reporting. Certainly it does at some point. I am not going to sit here and say the young whippersnappers eye on somea keen things, i may not. Do you have any observation about this tendency in the press that the more ideological tendency, is there historical precedent for that . There is always the precedents for advocacy. The presidency of doing things. For a long time, the black press was the only press talking about civil rights because the white Mainstream Press was addressing these issues. They were an advocacy group. And you see that, the alternative press that started in the 1960s, it was a left press that objected to the establishment. The alternative press in the current period came from the internet which is a right leaning press. So we have seen patterns of that over time. Newspapers that were started because they were abolitionist newspapers. Or because they were proslavery newspapers, or whatever the particular issues were of the day. And the end, the press that gets the most credibility if the is the press that attempts to reports the news objectively. And that is always been the balance, the counterbalance, to the advocates in the press. You want to believe what you are reading. It is the question of credibility that is really the bottom line. Jeffrey, do you have any thoughts on the legalities of this . How this has changed, and do you find people pushing and saying, im not getting the access i need because i am not in the Mainstream Press, whatever that means now . Well, the issue of who is a journalist from a legal perspective has been one that has been floating around pretty much for a long time but it definitely came more to focus with the dawn of the internet in particularly with the dawn of the social media era in terms of Getting Press credentials and being allowed access to journalistic events and this kind of thing. You know, that issue, it came up when congress was debating a federal shield law and it was a significant Sticking Point in terms of whether or not such a bill could pass, define the range of people that could be protected. As a First Amendment lawyer, i try to take a broad view of journalism, realizing it might have practical limitations. The broader the rights that we can fight for, the better we protect the core of journalistic activity. So if we can protect the fringe, to make sure they had First Amendment rights, the people in this room will certainly have them. So i guess what i would say is it is an ongoing issue, something we have been trying to push rights outward as far as possible, but you do get to practical considerations when it comes to things like who gets access to a small room, who gets to be a member of a pool. Are you allowed to take into account for example the size of an audience when determining who is allowed into a pool. Are you allowed to take into account the nature of the medium. There was a court case where a Federal District court ruled that it was unconstitutional to exclude i believe it was unconstitutional to exclude all Television Broadcasters from a particular press conference and only allow in print journalism, because that would have a restrictive effect on the reach of information and government shouldnt be making those choices. You know, these are so heavily context dependent. It is difficult to creating broader rules. When it comes to legal issues, legal remedies should almost always be be a backstop to informal remedies and negotiations between journalists and those they cover. We are a little like surgeons. We come in and you never want to need us. But when you do, you really do need us. So, when we take a look at the kinds of issues that we are facing now, ordinarily, things like relationships between the press and the hill we are not particularly concerned we are always concerned that journalists are getting the access they need but we dont have any real red flags right now around congress. The nature of the hostility between the white house and the press is such that organizations like mine are marshaling our resources for legal challenges in a number of different forums. So in terms of going back to an earlier point in this conversation, talking about what have the relationships with the white house done, to a certain extent it has escalated the level of preparation that we are undertaking as media lawyers for fights that may come up. And that is little bit ironic because the white house, which you mentioned, is the Vice President mike pence was a sponsor, the lead sponsor of the reporter shield bill in congress. So i just want to reiterate here that mike pence, like president trump, is invited to come to the National Press club anytime. We would be very interested to hear from him. And now we hear from the audience. Barbara, will you ask some of their questions . Barbara yes, thank you. And kathy, you can pick out the people who can respond to these and also, please keep your cards coming up in this direction. I dont have all that many questions so far. But the first one that we will go to is this many congressional offices force reporters to go through pr offices before they can talk to anyone. How about can we get a response to that . And also, are members of congress concerned that federal agencies are also forcing reporters to go through Communications Offices or pr offices only . And that this is, perhaps, impeding the flow of information . I would like to ask all the press secretaries to respond to that, starting with mike. We had a forum about this at the National Press club organized by who is in the audience, a member of the society of professional journalists. This has been a big point of theirs. Is there such a thing as censorship by Public Information how do youd why calibrate that . When is it ok for people to talk directly to reporters and why should there ever be a filter between expert and reporters . Let me start by just describing a little bit of the geography of the white house. The office of the press secretary in the west wing has got a back door to it which is helpful sometimes if the reporters are at the front door. If you got the back door and you turn right, 50 feet away you are in the oval office. You turn left 50 feet away and you are in the Briefing Room, where the press briefing happens every day and that is metaphorically what the role of the press secretary is, to be halfway between that adversarial relationship between the politician, the president , and the press corps who hold him accountable. And you need someone who will be a Bridge Builder. Now the role of the press secretary is also within the organization to try and help colleagues appreciate what the role of the free press is. And why you do have to be responsive and accountable. So without that kind of Bridge Builder between the two points of this necessary adversarial relationship, things break down, and most organizations and congressional offices want someone to be the person who fields the inquiries from the media, who is the right person to respond to search out the information that a reporter legitimately wants access to. You know, it is supposed to be a relationship of trust. The point carolyn made, not one that is a relationship of building barriers. That is the way best press secretaries do the job. Kathy let me push back on that. What about people these are folks who, whether they work for the fda, or the Agriculture Department, or the energy department, they are paid by the taxpayers. They are underutilized, that is my point. Some of the finest people i work with in government were career Civil Servant Public Information officers and they were a rich source of information. They had histories and they knew issues inside and out that, frankly, one of the best White House Press secretaries in history was a Public Information officer as a career Civil Servant and i think their role needs to be elevated. I think we need to get the more engaged and producing more material and more information. They should not be throttled by political appointees. When i was reporter, i ask this question and i think it is a standing frustration by reporters that they want to go to the person who is the decider and they dont want to go through the pio or the press secretary or whatever context it is. I am not in the same situation as mike or brendan in that the person that i work for, he is not the speaker. We are not trying to rally several hundred people together at the same time and drive them to a boat without them jumping out. But i think i agree with mike on this side. I am your in a lot of cases i am your advocate and your scheduler. So if you come to me as a journalist and say you want to talk to senator tom udall, i say, what is your deadline and kathy is a good example of someone who i would set up an interview for. Senator tom udall has a standing policy that he does every local interview that is possible in the schedule. I think it is important for reporters to understand that a senator or a lawmakers schedule, any cabinet secretary, their schedule is packed full of important things, all of them as important as Public Access or almost all of them. So if you are coming through the pio, that person will do their in most cases, do their very best to get you what you need. If it isnt a direct interview with the person that you are trying to reach, at least some sort of response. But, i also want to say i think youre asking, the person who asked that question is asking a legitimate question. Always ask the question. I dont practically know how it could work differently in my situation. I dont know how you could have the speaker of the house available 247 to answer questions. Both of them raise a good point. I know you probably dont believe us, but the press secretary is always probably the presss biggest advocate. They always are. Our press secretary is always pushing for the speaker to be more available to do an interview. You dont see that is often times you hear no or i cant help you. Just know that the press secretary is almost always going to be your advocate. A good press secretary they are a scheduler and they are sometimes forced to say they can they cannot help you with something but a good press secretary should be a resource. They should be there to help you. I mean, that is part of their job and the culture that we have in our office and in every office i been in is trying to make sure that you are as helpful as possible to that person. Make sure they get the right answer. Not necessarily out of the kindness of our heart but it benefits us. Especially on the hill where there is so many places you can go. We know that you have to go to somebody to get an answer. You get somebodys take on an issue. It might as well be ours. You might as well come to us. We want to be as helpful and as we can to you. We want to get it right and want to be on your side. And there are some things we just cant help you with. And that is just how it is sometimes. We are there to help you as much can, hopefully. Just know that we are advocating for more press access, internally. Jennifer when you are talking about congress, you do have the ability to stop a member of congress in the hallway and ask them a question. The problem is, though, if you are asking them something complex, you have about a minute to get your question out, to get their answer, to have them one ask one more question and then hope that you got all the context. If you then come back to me and you say, hey. I want to understand water policy in new mexico. I will spend six hours that it takes to help you understand that or more. Im exaggerating but you can get your answer fleshed out through the communications office. We can find you experts on staff. And we want to do that. Kathy and to what extent can they talk on the record . Because i think that is a frustration for any reporters, that if you even get to talk to the actual staff expert on an issue, it is always off the record. And that becomes very difficult and problematic because you are editors and i think your readers, for reasons of credibility, want to know who those people are. For me, we love connecting people with policy experts. Sometimes they are not as articulate as they may need to be and it can be as simple as that. But the point is, we want to be able to get them the information that they want. And that is as important as having a quote. And if you need and on the on the record, we hopefully can provide that. But the most important thing is youre talking to someone who knows what theyre talking about and that we can connect you with those people. John spokespeople have answered this question so far. I figured i should throw in the reporters perspective. Number one, we love and rely on Public Affairs people and press secretaries. They are absolutely critical and they help us so much, every day. However, i dont agree with the proposition that the press secretaries and the reporters are always aiming for the same objective, and it is just a matter of how to go about doing it. There are a lot of times where reporters want to get a story that either a lawmaker or somebody in the executive branch either doesnt want them to be dealing with at all, and is trying to thwart them or block them from getting, or just dont have time for somebody because this reporter only has a small circulation and they arent interested in it. So there are plenty of times where we need to talk directly to people and there are plenty of times when it is not just a difference of how to go about talking to people but of fundamental opposing objectives. I would hasten to add that capitol hill is a great place for access. I have no problems with access on capitol hill, i dont have a big problem talking to staffers on backgrounds, it is understood that is the way it goes. But especially in the executive branch and particularly when you try to cover the National Security agencies, it is a big problem when you want to talk to someone directly about something and you have to go through the Public Affairs office, you have to give them written questions in advance and it throttles the flow of information. And it is a huge problem. Kathy do you want to jump in . Mike i understand that frustration. Brendan made it a point. Some staffers are comfortable dealing with the press and all right. You have to try to find the right kind of balance. The one thing i would agree with is that there has been a tendency in the executive branch to overuse the background briefer. You bring someone in in front of a room of reporters and you dont let them be quoted as anything other than a Senior Administration official. And that gets to be a little bit ridiculous because everyone is in on the secret of who the person is except the people who have the right to know, the public. Frankly, when i was at the white house, we did try to bring the experts in government who knew the most about a given subject into the Briefing Room to answer questions from the press. That gets tricky, because sometimes, frankly, their superiors, maybe the secretary, would rather be the one giving the quotes. So you had to walk a delicate balance, sometimes. But i do wish more people came out and spoke on the record, so they would be held accountable for the information that they give. And i will say this i think anyone who is covering the white house can correct me if im wrong but i think the Current Trump administration has actually been better on that than the previous democratic administrations, including clinton, including obama. So i give them at least a little credit for that. Ei broadening who gets into the press briefing . Is it a good thing or is it cherry picking who gets to ask the questions . Mike if it is done authentically with the desire to get different voices from other parts of the country that might raise questions that would not otherwise come from the captive press corps at the white house, i think it is legitimate that i am a little skeptical that it was the purpose. Kathy yes, next question . Are we ready to move on . Earlier, the panel talked about fascinations sometimes for the bright shiny object or the less important more trivial story. We have a couple of questions related to that. Do you believe journalistic integrity is becoming increasingly compromised for the sake of clicks and ratings . And what role do journalists and elected officials play in self policing against the reality tv environment the Trump Administration has created . Kathy does anyone want to jump in . Any of the journalists . Clicks are yesterdays circulation figures. I dont know if there is that much of a difference, to tell you the truth. I am open to arguments, but reporters always want to write news that people will read as opposed to news that they wont read. Kathy but let me just say, i do think there is a difference now. You know, i think when we were writing for newspapers, we always knew that more people would read the juicy divorce story than would read the subcommittee hearing on the education bill. Absolutely. Kathy but we put the subcommittee hearing story in the paper, it might have been on page b3, and the juicy divorce story would have been underneath the fold but it would be on page one. Now i think the juicy divorce story is at the top of the website and the subcommittee hearing might not be there at all because one of the technical changes is chart beat. Everybody can look and you might have had some general idea that the divorce story would get more readers than the subcommittee story but now we can see that in real time. How do we guard against that . You want to i think we are leaving one group of people out of the equation. The editors. There was a slogan on capitol hill for years, it used to be said you couldnt work through Congress Without picking out a couple of stories but editors hate congress because most of the stories they get our our what they call Railroad Timetable stories. The bill left it subcommittee before gets to the floor and a lot of those stories get put on the cutting room floor. Editors, for centuries, have not wanted to write that sort of story. So reporters on capitol hill they knew more than what were reporting in the process. Part of it was the question are you part of an institution and how does this news get filtered . And in the modern day with the internet, are you now the sole support of your news Agency Online . Are you putting things out without editors . But the editor is part of the whole process to be considered. Kathy that is a great point. And i would ask the folks maybe brendan and jennifer to talk about it. How frustrating is it that was my experience when i was covering congress that people like an institution that has one face. Congress has 535 faces and i think some of them are pretty interesting but it is hard to compete with the white house. How do you is that a frustration to you and do you have any thoughts on how people could be better informed . Because obviously, if the first time you hear about a bill that will affect your life is when it comes up for a final vote on the floor, you dont have much chance to influence it, right . Brendan i couldnt agree more. The reporters that cover the hill are awesome. They kick butt and they are there late at night and there devoted what they do. They are devoted to what they do. I think it is more a larger question of how does journalism survive when what we do is seen as too boring to be covered or featured anywhere . It isnt a reporter issue. The folks who are there are doing the boring work of sitting outside the hearing room or whatever might be to get the story. It is frustrating to us that the stuff we care about is less important, but i am a little sympathetic to it because i know you guys are trying to figure out how does journalism survive and make money these days so it is an existential question for you guys. I Wish Congress was more interesting to people. I think there are a lot of interesting characters, i think there are a lot of interesting stories and i think what we do matters to people. But again. I think it is an editors thing, a publisher thing and a revenue thing. And i understand that. I dont know what the answer is that it is certainly not getting any better for us on this side. Kathy your experience in ohio, are people surprised, did people writing about more substantive stories, was it work successful, commercially, or are we making a mistake in thinking that people want the celebrity story and not the whole grain, nutritious story about the piece of legislation that is going to affect their lives . Well actually, the story isnt in yet about whether it will be fully commercially successful but in terms of the public response to that issue coverage and particularly, actually seeing someone on a sunday Morning Television show say back to the candidate but what the people of ohio went to hear from you is x, it got very positive responses. And if i pick up on one part of the question that was worded about selfpolicing, in terms of, we seem to be normalizing Reality Television as part of the way this administration is covered . We actually hear back from the public a lot about that. And we get asked questions about what can we do . This isnt right. It isnt good in a democracy. So i think there is a way for journalists to link with the public in terms of pushing back on what everybody understands is an unprecedented way we are receiving information as if it is news. Barbara . A provocative question here how can politicians and the public trust the press that openly encourages and facilitates leaks, some of them felonies, and how does the publishing of classified material differ from conspiring to commit a felony . Kathy mike, what do you think . There has been a lot of talk about the leaks of the transcripts of president trumps conversations with foreign leaders. Is that beyond the pale . Mike be very careful here. Yes, it is. Yes, it is a felony. When you take an oath of office to serve in our government, you swear to uphold laws and it is breaking the law to take a classified document and to turn it over to someone who is not authorized to receive it. And that should be punished. It is also fundamentally corrosive to the ability of a president to conduct diplomacy, foreign meetings, if he cannot trust people to keep confidential things that are necessary for him to do work. Now that said, there is a caveat. When things are so broken and so dysfunctional that people of goodwill, who served this country and also take the same oath of office believe the whistle has to be blown, then sometimes you get what you have seen in the newspapers recently. Leaks every White House Leaks we have made it a business of leaking and usually the leak is about trying to extend the length of time or interest in something that the white house is working on. So you leak it to get it on the front page of usa today so it gets picked up by the newspapers and that gets picked up by television so you get more but things, but those are controlled leaks. The kind of leaks we are seeing are evidence of maladministration and dysfunction. Because that is when you see unauthorized leaks of classified material when people do not believe there is an internal process that arrives at rational legitimate decisions. And that usually starts as someone famously said recently, the fish rots from the head. And i think thats true. Kathy anybody else want to weigh in . I have written two books on the history of the press corps and i looked at the index the other day and both of them have long sections on leaks. Leaks have been going on for a long time. One of my favorite examples is the treaty of waterloo bay hidalgo waterloo bay hit all go leaked to the press and there was a great cry about it and they figured out it was the secretary of state who leaked it at the time. For everybody who has a reason to keep something secret in washington, there is usually somebody else who has a reason to open that up. And it is hard for any administration to get complete control and that is nothing new. A recent Communications Director said a century ago, people would be hung for this and i have no evidence that a reporter with hung or thaty any source was ever hung for leaking. Some people went to jail but nobody was ever hung. Sure, and just from the legal perspective, there is a significant difference between a reporter and a leaker within the government, in terms of agreements they have signed and the roles they play and also with respect to the First Amendment. It is important to remember that a classification decision does not, all that by itself, constitute an exception to the First Amendment right to the press to convey importance to cash information of public importance to the public. And so, there are very complex and valuation that come into play when there is a decision to publish that kind of information. Whether or not the espionage act could constitutionally be applied to a journalist is a question of significant constitutional dimension. One which we are very concerned about, from the perspective that the First Amendment must be respected in that context. Barbara . Barbara next question, what can the press club do to bring the Diverse Voices into this conversation, in terms of race, age and type of journalism including nontraditional forms . Kathy well, we have had a number of panels that have included journalists and i think it is very important that journalists have that there be diversity on panels. And that there be diversity in our discussions. Because we are the hardest bias to extirpate is the one you dont know is there. Because it is easy to say, i am going to get both sides of this story or three sides of this story, but it is hard to know what you are not seeing because of where you grew up, how you grew up, that is why we try to bring Diverse Voices to represent different points of view, different democracies. Representing different demographics. People who are here today are people are experts on this particular topic and i think when and if the power structure of the United States becomes more diverse, there will be people in those positions representing that diverse city. We make an effort to include that, we today wanted to include people that have real expertise in the field and real experience in the field and i am really grateful they are all here. Also, as we said earlier, this is just the beginning of a series of discussions that we have been convening and will continue to convene. We expect that over time, we will be able to get to lots of different players in this particular area. But it is a great question and good point. We talked also about who is coming to the capital, who is covering congress. One of the questions is about the explosion of newsletters with niche audiences. Im not reading everything. Many staffers are covering agencies and departments because Mainstream Media has left specialty coverage behind. Good question, i guess this is a question, for billy, just getting back to the point you think there is more focus on capitol hill because that is where the news is what do you think it is because people are not covering other beats that we used to cover and are you seeing a lot more trade publications . Back in the day when i was on the Standing Committee, most of the people who probably felt a predominant number of credentialed covered for mass media publications. Can you talk about the rise of these publications that are quite expensive for people to subscribe to and are we getting into a world of news have and havenots were some people are going to get detailed information about legislation because they can afford a sixfigure annual subscription and others arent . Of course, i work for bloomberg, which may be an icon of that sort of thing right now. There are verticals in the hill and politico that focus on things. There are reporters doing markup things, they are providing readers that detailed luscious rich information on that topic or area they are searching. Some of it may be expensive, as in the hill, some of it becomes outside the pay wall. And its available to others. One thing i would want to mention in terms of the overall, a lot of these reporters work late at night in the House Office Buildings covering meetings that go late at night and they use a raburn press room to do a lot of their filings, they go back and forth in the building talking about access, we just got information that house leadership wants to shut that down because of a need for more office space for members. But that is another thing that may not be conscious going at the press, but it is another thing that is undermining or would undermine the ability of some of these reporters to do that latenight work, to hang with the committees as they do markups, perhaps 24 hours long. It is out there, it is being provided. How available it is to everyone, i dont have that expertise. We are renovating the House Office Buildings and many members and committees are being displaced im sorry one of the press offices is being displaced, as well. It is a matter of renovating a 100yearold building. The head of the photographers press gallery, i see here, i would say one of my former colleagues from usa today served in the same capacity that billy does for the press photographers. Press photographers have a terrific space right off the senate right where a lot of the Senate Leaders like to have their offices and tim told me one time, chris dodd, who was then the democratic leader of the rules committee, came and said we want your space. We are going to take it away and tim went into the files and pulled out an old letter and said, senator, your father gave us this space. [laughter] chris todd just deflated and said, i give up. Chris dodd just kind of up. Ted and said, i give it is always a fight for reporters to have that prime space, which is important because there is nothing like getting a fresh hot quote before the members have a chance to go back and read it with all of your press people. We have time for one more question from the audience . I was going to ask how much time you needed to wrap up. We have some students, as you pointed out, here in the audience. Two questions. Were about to unleash our latest group of journalists on official washington this comes from amy from American University what tone is most important for them . Should they be respectful, aggressive, pushing . The other question along these same lines is, is there anything the panelists would like him journalists starting out here as they embark on this use and sector to know . Why doesnt everyone take a shot at that and use this if you have any closing remarks, anything to get off your chest. Remember, you can leave things on the table because we hope we will all be back here for more conversations. I will start. Should you be respectful, aggressive and pushy . Yes. You should absolutely be respectful all the time. It will help you professionally, but yeah, dont be afraid to keep asking and keep asking. That would be my main advice to any young journalist. First, read of and you can the subject and what is viewed and what isnt, just show up. It is amazing what you find out just being there. Just walking the hallways. That would be my advice. I agree with that. I would be a little more on the kinder, gentler side and a little less on the aggressive, pushy side. I would also say keep a sense of humor. We dont have enough opportunities that to laugh at some of the ridiculous this in washington. Look for funny moments that show the human character. Last piece of advice i have is write. Write. Writing. Our hug your editor when they make you rewrite. Understand that important thoughts take more then 140 to 140ake more than characters. Being from the National Institute of civil discourse, given how important the American Public current he thinks thinks civility is, how members of congress treat each other disrespectfully, how members of congress treat people at public hearings disrespect lee, and this came to a head with the shooting of representative scalise, where were some members hats off to orrin hatch, the oped he didnt Time Magazine three weeks ago. He basically said civility is essential to democracy. I think the public is intuitively knowing that and yet it isnt a topic that gets covered sufficiently. I would invite all of you to take a serious look and it is civility among the public themselves. We have launched an initiated after relaunch civility, we are doing as much as we can to hold the public and elect did officials and journalists to accountability in terms of bringing back social norms that are essential to a healthy democracy. I endorse that sentiment. Would givef advice i should remember that everyone is a real person in jobs. A big part of the breakdown we see right now is people dont know each other well enough. That extends to members of congress, the media, public official relationships. It is easy to assume the worst about somebody if you dont know them. It is easy to take a shot at somebody if you dont know them. Understand that especially on capitol hill, it is a collection of people trying to do what they think is best, get to know them. Understand where they are coming from and that will work better for all of us. Speaking from the perspective that somebody might have to defend what you do in court later [laughter] i would say professionalism and perspective are critical for precisely that reason. If something goes wrong, you wind up needing somebody like me. You want to be in a position where you are the one who looks like you are behaving well. Take good notes if something goes wrong. Note who was there, what happened, anybody else who somebody like he want to talk to. Make sure your record is clean and current so that when you are trying to explain what happened, youve got the best set of facts available to you. Obviously, i am talking about confrontational situations. We hope they dont happen. The other piece of advice is if you do need to deal someone with someone like me, whether in a newsroom setting or you run into an issue where you need Legal Assistance later, remember that although i am a lawyer, although people like me are lawyers, we are there to help you. We serve your gold getting there information to get to the public and to help you publish what you want to publish. From personal experience, the first is please dont be afraid to ask a question. If you think this is a stupid question some of the questions i thought were the most stupid or ignorant, or choose your own magic of adjective have led to the best information. I have watched journalists ask questions and not, and wished that they would. So dont ever feel that your question is not good enough to ask. The second pieces is along the lines of what brendan said. The people you are covering are people. One of the things i was most surprised about when i changed sides from journalism to pr, the amount of thought and earnest thought that goes into big decisions. People really want to make a right decision. They want to serve the public well. Give them the space to make those decisions. If they are not answering your questions or they want to give it more thought, they probably do. I would agree with brendan and jennifer, all of the above, but another thing, think of yourself as an individual, not a scrum or part of a scrum. Think of opportunities no one else is thinking of in terms of reporting. I would also agree that most lawmakers do want to talk to you, but there is a way to turn them off pretty fast and when they think youre only aim is to quickly get a quote a pithy quote and tweet it to have more followers, that gets old on them pretty fast. All of the above, be an individual. Find out now and then where you can go that is not a scrum and find some news. I would like to put in a plug for preparing yourself as fully as possible. While you are still in school, take as much history as you can and read some history. Every story has a back story. Everything should be put into its context. Its larger context. I remember 1998 when the house impeached the president , a reporter asked who was Andrew Johnson and why was he impeached . [laughter] at least she asked the question at that point. There is a good long story behind every thing in the process. Not everything was created just now. Not everything is absolutely unique. Look into the larger picture. I cannot add to those remarks. You have gotten a terrific sense of how journalists approach their work, how newsmakers approach their work. I would echo what jennifer and brendan said that in the many years i have reported in washington, the most satisfying thing to me has been getting to know people as people. The great thing about democracies it allows greatly flawed people to do great things. Dont let the flaws get in the way of reporting the good news, which is that sometimes, we manage to do great things. In the interest of getting to know each other as people, i want to thank on behalf of the Journalism Institute, all of our panelists here today. All of our audience members here today and i want to thank cspan for bringing this to a wider audience. We hope, as if we have said repeatedly, but this is the beginning of a longer conversation. We would love to get more of our friends, including some of you elected officials, back for a deeper conversation that would be facilitated by the team at the National Institute of civil discourse. But to do that, we need to raise some money. So if you liked what you heard today, consider sending your taxdeductible contributions to the National Press Club Journalism institute. Or you can support us by attending the Journalism Institutes next fundraiser on september 26, the fabled National Press club spelling bee. Yes, it will be a press against the politicians. I have to say last year we had a great turnout of spellers, i am following the president. Turnout ofgreat spellers. But, brendan, we had no republicans among the competitors. I dont believe i cant believe that your conference is that orthographically challenged. [laughter] kathy so, brendan, tell your b. O. S. S. It is time to go. Asap. Thank you all for participating. This meeting is adjourned. 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