There to find their way into the site. But i am keenly aware when i write about china now i am being read not but just by my motherinlaw but by chinese. And i think that does raise your game. Again, i hope by it takes me back to a that you question ducked earlier on new technology and the effect that has. The New York Times benefited from the wikileaks story. The New York Times decided that it would send a team of reporters to another newspaper in england where the information already was, so it was no act of journalistic genius to go over there and pick up that information and then put it into the times. So what does that mean about the times and a fitting from wikileaks . Is that a good thing . Are they to be proud of the fact that they made that decision . You should really ask Arthur Sulzberger that. Bill keller. He was seated here, and i did ask him. What did he say . He made an effort to answer it, which is more than you are doing. [laughter] you see, im trying to understand. The reason i am dodging this question and i am dodging it is because did you notice . Is because it is a hugely complicated question, and i have not dealt with the raw material, the legal bit. I have not been deeply involved than i do not want to freelance on it. Ok. Then i will put it this way. [laughter] tomorrow morning, you are sitting in your office, and you get a call from the guardian in london and the guardian says, hey, tom, you are one of the greatest columnists ever and we want to bring you in on something. We have just received from bin ladens motherinlaw who does not live in chicago, should live somewhere else in the middle east, and she has his personal plans for taking over the world. This is what he was going to do. We want to bring you in on that. You have to come over here and take a look at it and then run with it. Would you do that . I would definitely go over there and take a look at it. Whether i would run with it would depend on the veracity of it. Would depend on what the real content was. The journalist in me get would definitely do that. Lets move along. The New York Times. I love to pick it up in the morning. Ten years from now, will i have that privilege . Dont know. Really dont know. You know, one of the themes of my columns in the last seven or eight years has really, what i call, i think we are in a gutenberg scale moment of change. That is, i believe that were in a moment that is a kin to gutenbergs invention of the Printing Press when the way in which information is generated, turned into knowledge and transforms into products and services has undergone a massive transformation. I always tell people, someone was alive when gutenberg invented the printing priest. Some monk said to some priests, now this is cool. I do not have to use this quill anymore. We can stamp these things out, holy mackerel i believe we are at a similar mom, and i call it the move from connected to hyper connected. And it happened just in the last decade or a little bit more, and it was completely disguised by the subprime crisis and post9 11. We are living it. We are living all of the innovations that it is throwing off, all the incredibly rapid change. But no one is really describing it. My sound bite on this, you may of heard me say is that when i sat down to write that used to be us, the first thing i did was go back and get the First Edition of the world is flat to remind myself what i said. I started that book in 2004. So i waited up to the index. I looked under abcdef facebook was not in it. So when i was running around the world, last time we talked, and saying the world is flat. We are all connected. Facebook did not exist. Twitter was still a sound. The cloud was still in the sky. 4g was a parking place. Linkedin was a prison. Big data was a rap star and skype was a typo. Ok, so all of that happened after i wrote the world is flat. So what does that tell you . It tells you something really big just happened in the plumbing of the world. We went from connected to hyper connected, and it is changing every job, every workplace. How is it changing journalism . Is that a good thing . What would you say . We now have when nytimes. Com, we have the most email lists. So we are using big data, to track most tweeted. On the one hand, any the New York Times journalist who says, i do not look at the list is lying to you. Do they go up or down. But it also is very, that can be dangerous, because i write about Foreign Affairs. And um, there are times when i should write about Foreign Affairs issues that may not make the list at all. You can tell. There are certain issues that just do not make the list. You write a political, sizzling piece about you know governor chris christie, goes to the top of the list. But if you write about the problem of water in chad, you are not going to make the list. As a journalist, as a columnist, do you start saying, i am not going to write about this whole set of issues because they are not going to make, most tweeted. So what do i do . I write about them and despite that. Some days it does not go up the list. The New York Times is going to have more of a lefty readership, and the New York Times online will have more of a young and left readership. Just by its nature. If you were to write a pro george w. Bush column, it is not good to make the list, baby. It is not going to get near. In the way you would a proobama one. Dan rather sitting here a couple of years ago said that in his judgment what rules ina newsroom these day is fear. Fear. He was talking about the consequences of 9 11, and the way in which journalism covers these events. You have introduced the cause of my question, you have introduced an element now having to do with the new way in which journalism has to be mindful of the new technology. Right. Does the new technology, in your view, pervert or force you into places you would not want to be dealing with stories that you would not want to deal with . Simply in order to get the ratings boost . Um, i think it is an important question to be asking. I cannot give you a specific example right now, but what i can tell you is that you sit where i sit, it is just incredibly noisy now. And um, you know, i find that more and more, im shrinking my aperture. I got to filter out a lot of stuff. You are constantly being written about, basically. If you take too much of that in, it is really paralyzing and i start to write for you, and that is really. Dangerous i think this applies to young journalist, old journalist. I remember my daughter was in college, and she called me one day, there is an issue on campus that had disturbed her. And i said, honey, why dont you blog about it . In the campus newspaper. And she said no, everyone will blog about me. It really stuck in my mind. And so, to now be, i think a columnist at a place like the New York Times, wall street journal, you need a thick skin, but you have to keep your balance. If you could imagine yourself being a very important politician for example responsible for making decisions affecting all of us, the question that the feedback loop is so fast now. And so immediate. People tracking, twitter. I stay away from that stuff because i do not want to get knocked off my game. But that has to affect, if you are a politician, the way in which you think about voters, getting votes, saying certain things to attract certain constituencies. Have you in your coverage, so i am putting you as a journalist going to be hard for you to duck it please. Have you met a president since you have been doing these Opinion Pieces who is a great man . Um, you know, thats i think all the president s i have covered have had moments of greatness and a lot of moments of not greatness. But i have a lot of affection, this may come as a surprise, i dont know, for george bush, the elder, the father, who i covered as a reporter. I was the Diplomatic Correspondent for the times at the time. And the reason i have such Great Respect for him has to do with a very specific achievement that i think he forged that he was central in that so affected everyone that he has never quite gotten credit for. He brought the end of the cold war two germanies. The unification of germany and he brought the soviet union for a soft landing, and other than the one incident did he do that or gorbachev . He, gorbachev, that whole generation i think was amazing. He, margaret thatcher, gorbachev. But he was there and had it not gone well, he wouldve gotten the blame. And i think his role in that, the decisions he made were really, helped pave the way for the world that came afterward. Are you optimistic maybe that is not quite the right word are you positive in your feeling that the current generation a political leader in this country can cope with the dimension of challenge now facing Political Leadership . It is funny. I was just in israel and i was thinking about that issue. There. Can the leadership there handle the lift. I begin to wonder. U. S. A very important question. First of all, i know how noisy it is if youre just writing a column for the New York Times. I cannot imagine how noisy it is for the president of the united states. Just all of the stuff coming in now. Someone checking twitter and facebook in the evening in the morning news and cable tv. And so i think that is a real problem. And i also think that the complexity of the problems you have to deal with. Think of you and your brother wrote an amazing biography of Henry Kissinger. Lets think of Henry Kissinger 1973 1974. He goes to the middle east to forge the first real peace agreement, disengagement agreement between egypt, israel, and syria. In egypt, he negotiates with one egyptian pharaoh named sadat, in syria, negotiates with a syrian dictator, and it is really negotiates with the Prime Minister golda maier whose majority in the knesset was so big no one had ever heard of the likud party. Lets Flash Forward now. You are john kerry. In syria, who do you negotiate with . Theres anybody who answers the phone that comes off the wall, basically. In israel, you have a kind of minority majority coalition. Not know who is in power but it is a really complicated set of coalition partners. Benjamin netanyahu is in power. The ministry of interior. By 6 00, he will end his political life. Hop over to egypt, it was the generals and morsi, and a general again. Think of what a difficult time this is. I also have enormous sympathy for anyone in these jobs. You mentioned before your most recent book which is called that used to be us. Here i want to ask you about whether im right in my belief in my many years of radio that you are a very optimistic and deeply patriotic many years of reading you that you are a optimistic and patriotic person, and yet in this book, the title as well as part of it are for from a pessimistic. You seem to be suggesting that we are at a tipping point, and if something goes wrong, were going to be up the creek without a paddle. What happened to your optimism . So, you know, let me start with where it came from and where it might have gone. So i grew up in minnesota, in the 1950s, at a time in a place where politics the year i graduated high school, the then governor anderson was on the cover of Time Magazine holding up a walleye, holding in the headline. The state that works. I grew up in this place where myself, the cohen brothers, al franken grew up at the same time. Our congressmen were liberal republicans. The companies in minnesota, 3m, Dayton Hudson thought it was their obligation to build a theater. It was not a diverse place. We had one africanamerican person in my high school. I do not want to suggest it was a perfect or a snapshot of america, but i grew up in a place where politics seem to work and solve problems, and that really formed, that was really a formative thing i am always looking for minnesota in some way in my journalism. And by then i have gone off, to the middle east and obviously, that cheered me. I saw some horrific things in beirut and jerusalem and i covered the massacre in syria. But i have never lost that sense. One of the things that journalists have lost, a bright dividing line today sometimes, some journalists, is the line between skepticism and cynicism. You know, the skeptics i do t know. I want to check it out. I will not take anyones word for it, but i want to report it out. Show me. A cynic says, i already know who you are. One of the things that worries me is i did a call about this once where i came back. I was hired by upi, and spent two years in beirut. There was a reporter in the business section at that time. Nathaniel was a wonderful, looks like a choir boy and he was a bornagain christian and he loved to hear about the whole event. So we did have lunch and talk to him about israel. When i went off to beirut for the times, he said, i am going to pray for your safety. I said, i will appreciate that. Two years later after i got out of her room alive beirut alive, he was one of the first people i called. I said, thank you. It was, i thought you were my good luck charm. And Nathaniel Nash was on ron browns airplane when it slammed into a mountain in bosnia and he died in that crash. In my mind, because he was such a she was someone who taught me the difference between skepticism and cynicism and i kept that in my mind. We have got about a minute left, and i want to know whether deep down you are an optimistic about america now. Deep down i feel this that i think the most Important National foreignpolicy issue global issue in the world is the health and vitality of this country. If we go dark as a country go dark . If we are pessimistic, if we cannot emulate these values were restarted freedom, opportunity, perl is an pluralism your kids will grow up in a fundamentally different world. That is why i invest so much of my time in writing about america, because i do believe it is the most amazing country in the world and the world will be a very different place if we cannot be all we need to be. I am really sorry that our time was up because i would like to continue with that saying but we have run out of time. And i want to thank our audience first and i want to thank our audience around the nation and the world by way of the internet and webs and all of that, and most important, our guest New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman for sharing his thoughts, his insights about big questions. I am very grateful to you. That is it for now. I am marvin kalb. Say, goodow used to night, and good luck. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] thank you very much. We now have about 15 or 20 minutes, and we can, that is to say you can, ask tom questions and what i would like to do is suggest you come up front where there are two people with microphones, and your voice will be heard if you come right up here to the microphone. Please identify yourself. Let us know what youre associated with, university or whatever, and please ask a question and not make a speech. I am a retired navy captain, and thanks for all of the great work you do and mr. Kalb, thanks for putting this on tonight. A couple things. First, i have a book from Paul Brinkley oh, good. I have a two part question. How would you rate the trust factor of america in the world right now . And two, since we are in the press club, how does the International Press look to the American Press and what is your assessment of that . It is are very fair question and a big question. It is hard for me to generalize about how the whole world, how much it trust us are not. If you are saudi arabia right now and your fear is that we are going to make up with iran, you do not trust us very much. If you are, if you are japan, and you are worried about china, maybe you trust us a lot because you have to. It would be really hard to generalize. But i kind of know what is behind your question and on balance, you know, the trust level if we have put it quantify i think it is going down, not up. The second question was . The American Press again, i think it really is, it really depends. And i think it depends the country, the newspaper, the tv outlet, the radio, the specific journalist i would be reluctant to generalize. There is International Press here. You should ask them. Thank you for that question. Yes, please . Hi, green connections. One of the issues your name . I did. One of the issues is energy and Energy Security. You mention it in your book and obviously Energy Security and independence is critical to the future of this country being its potential and the freedom to and the freedom from. And we have stories like the clean tech crash from 60 minutes, and we have other journalism that is sometimes covering it and sometimes not, what is your assessment of the coverage, what army missing, and can you give us your take on this component of the issue what are we missing . I have not looked at all the coverage and i am not going to make, i would not want to make a grand sweep on the coverage per se. I think it is a hugely important issue, and i think 60 minutes did that story and the next week google bought an amazing clean tech company. People really have to be careful about, i think, generalizing about some of these things. So i spent a lot of time covering climate, water, energy issues. I think it is hugely important. It is also from a journalistic point of view really interesting. You have given me a chance to make a plug that i just completed a documentary with showtime. Years of living dangerously. It begins on april 13. And i did the one on climate and environmental stresses and the arab spring, showing how underlying the arab uprising were a lot of climate, water and environmental stresses. They did not cause it but they contributed. Harrison ford did deforestation in indonesia. Matt damon the water issue. It is an amazing series, and we hope it will be something that helps rekindle interest and debate on this. Coming over here, i mentioned to marvin at dinner, i had to start with 60 degrees in sochi today. In the winter olympics. That is why i always use the term i never use the term global warming. I try not to, because that sounds so, so cuddly. Global warming. It sounds like golf in february to me. I much prefer global weirding. What actually happens is the weather gets wird. Eird. You get two feet of snow in new york and 60 degrees in sochi. The hots get hotter and the dries get dryer. You see what is happening in california. That is what climate scientists predict will unfold. I am going to ask you to give answers that are little brief because we have got so many people. Just please. Thank you very much. The boston globe. Um, since we are talking about freedom, i would be interested in your take on this. A lot of freedom post 9 11 was couched in terms of spreading freedom by military force. Im curious your take on the Lessons Learned of the post9 11 approach to spreading freedom. What did we do wrong . Where are we now, and what can we do to maybe improve that trust which is obviously down in part because of that reaction . Hard to give a short answer to that very valid and important question. So many things went wrong in iraq and afghanistan. Hard to know where to start. The first was obviously, one of the things i think most went wrong and iraq, which you can understand now. You are talking to someone who really wanted that war to work, who believed in the opportunity and necessity of trying to build an island of freedom in that part of the world is that if you look at the arab spring today, which ones have succeeded and which one not, and your question deserves a long answer but i will just give you this part o f f it. There is one common denominator that tunisia and yemen have and that is the principle of no vic tor, no vanquished. Somehow everyone has to be included, including the ancien regime. Iraq a little bit of what we did iniraq iraq the one thing we did in iraq not only with saddam hussein. We also had to deal with the baathists. We created a victor and vanquished. Because one side thinks sunnis in iraq think that that they can have it all. Sunnis in iraq think they can have it all i was speaking about serious. That syria. That was the biggest mistake of all. Thank you. Yes, please . A former white house foreignpolicy adviser. I want to ask you about the current israelipalestinian discussions that are going on, and do you feel optimistic that they will be a final resolution to this debate that has been going on for decades . So, um, i am, im more optimistic than i have been in a while. And that means i think the chances are 50 50. You know, so that is what optimism really constitutes today. On the one hand, when i was just there last week, i just dont se e how this current leadership on both sides can make the big lift, the huge concessions they have to make in order for a deal to be forged. And on the other hand, i do not see how they do not do it, because if what is really at stake to put into the context of middle east diplomacy, i truly believe, and there had to be at some point, i d believe that theo kerry mission will tell us whether the two state solution is still possible. And if, john kerry, i believe, is the last train. And the next train is the one coming out them. Ok, thanks, tom. Yes, please . Hi. Im working at brookings. I wanted to circle back to the freedom and freedom of the press. I did my graduate work in europe and ireland specifically, and i found that the News Coverage of the irish times was fairly different than the what we would get here. When i spoke to my peers about it they said, your press is so sensitive. My question about it is do you put any stock in that snap judgment or do you think it is more of an audience issue or just what we care about . I always try to avoid gross generalizations like our press is censored. I have heard that. I went to graduate school in england. I know what it is like to look at america from the outside in. All i can tell you is you know, like i served in beirut with a lot of european and american correspondence, and we covered those stories very differently. And i dont think there is anything i really disagreed sometimes with some take they might have. You know, you pick up the typical european prep on israel, for instance. It is just the baseline starts at a much higher level of hostility, not just skepticism, frankly. And so they might say, well, you are censored in america. We might say that you start out with a bias. That is why like to read papers from all over the world and i like to see everybodys perspective, but i cannot pass judgment on whos censored and who is just coming at it totally straight. Thank you, tom. Yes, please. I am currently with cctv america. My question for you is about reconciling freedom. Is is is him and his rwandan genocide. Looking at the middle east and afghanistan, the killing of innocent people in iraq, yemen, somalia, how do you as a journalist reconcile that . One of the problems you always have in this job is people, and when you are a bad things as well, happen all over the world all of and because bad things are happening, it does not always tell you what to do. So, for instance, you might say, we should have intervened in were wanda. A lot of people felt that at the time. But what we have already learned from some of our actions are ready like iraq and afghanistan, maybe we dont know what we are doing, and sometimes intervention, that gets you through day one. You stop people from doing bad things, but i think what i is sort of learn from the whole can stopst things, we people from one thing, but we rarely can make them it said, maybe we can never make them do good things, so once you get done stopping people doing bad things, like libya, for instance, we thought what we stop what we thought was a massacre in benghazi, and then we could not go in and could not make people do good things, and then they started fighting among themselves, so my take away from the last 10 years is a lot more humility about these things and if you will be end, you have to will the means. That can lead to its own downside. That would be my answer. Thanks. Yes, please. Max michael, i did a graduate degree at uw in international affairs. You mentioned your high regard for president bush and his work internationally. Bush the elder. And then you also mention secretary kissingers work in the middle east. Looking at bush the elder, does high regard also extend to his secretary of state, jim baker . And iovered jim baker, have very high regard for the job you did at secretary of state. Yes. Thank you very much. Yes, please. My name is nicholas sorensen. I am an undergraduate at gw and am a great admirer of your column and report. I was here when ted koppel was the guest about the changing state of news, and i read the New York Times a lot, and i am reading out to zero and bbc more synnex andading people writing for that group alone. That, likefeel about the business of fox news . We will do one question, because we have to keep going. One of the sites i go to people often ask me, hey, what do you read . Of course, i get up in the morning and read the New York Times first, and i read the New York Times and the Washington Post and the financial journal, and i get up early, so some are not even there at my doorstep, but i also really enjoy real clear politics, because it gives me a really wide range, and one of the questions, and international opinion, as a kind of onestop shop of some al jazeera, some beirut daily star, some dear spiegel, and i am a news junkie, and i am an opinion so i love reading opinion and other peoples opinions and a wide range of opinion, and i try every once in a while, and i do not have time, and i am not going to do it as a habit, because you have to do a lot of prep relation preparation, but al jazeera asked me to be on their show, and there were tough, and theing debaters, issue of debate was is america a force for good in the world, and i took the affirmative on al jazeera at the oxford debate, and i do that to test myself, and i think it is really important when you sit where i sit to give people a shot at you every once in a while, something that bush and cheney never did. Their idea was to go to the Heritage Foundation and have no questions, and so, again, that is not something i am going to do all the time, but i think from time to time you should do that. Time for justhave two questions. James tyson, brookings. Thanks for talking. I think a quote, and i dont remember the exact one, but something along the lines of those who give up their freedom to preserve it get neither my that was one of the introducers, yes. I was wondering, i went to get your take on that, because isfeeling is that freedom something we have given up in favor of security, and i am wondering whether you believe there is any way, and if there is, what laypeople might be convinced to give up their security to preserve values . Thank you. It is a very important question, and all i can do is go back to what i said. To thewhelming reaction whole snowden affair is two things. This is inevitable, and this is healthy that we have this discussion. Wheree if you know technology is going now, it is leaping ahead as the world gets hyper connected, so much for human beings to adapt and adjust, but at the same time, i think you have to be aware. I go back to why i am seeing golf swing adds. People are voluntarily giving up, or in my case, not up freedom ofving information that is being used and crammed at me, and i think we need to have a very big discussion about this. Last question, please. Thank you for the discussion. Bill clifford. Your concern if america goes dark. Assess thee you to American Education system and how good a job it does keeping the lights on of creating globally minded citizens. What would need the prescriptions to do a better job . That is not a question. That is like a whole new thing. I think, and i do write about this occasionally if you go to the exams and whatnot. But what i find, i write about education a lot. I am not an educator. I just play one on tv. I am interested in american power, economics that goes to jobs, and that takes you to education, and so i am kind of but i think we, have a lot of work to do. There is no question about it erie it i think the single most important issue in my view is parent and t parents to instill a love of learning to their children and have high expectations, everything else, teacher ed, reform, technology is third, fourth, and fifth, as far as i am concerned. Let me say, first of all, these are great questions. And i incident as many as i issue oft this pessimism and optimism runs through it, so i will leave you with this story. Ron rus ron n fairly regularly, and i asked one, why do you run my column, and he said, you are the only optimist we have, and another was at my said side, and he said, i know why you are an ox, and he said, yes, it is because you are short. You can only see that part of the glass that is half full. I am not so sure, but i am still an optimist. Thank you. Thank you very, very much for coming. Thank you, everyone. Coming up tonight on cspan, a former air force pilot who talks about his book, leading with honor. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2014] this week on q a, lee ellis discusses his five and a half years in North Vietnam as a prisoner of war. Lee ellis, go back to november 7, 1967, at 4 00. What happened . I was in my 53rd combat mission in vietnam. And were we rolled in working with
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