Transcripts For FOXNEWSW MediaBuzz 20141006

Underestimating isis in his intelligence agencies but did the media also fall short in covering these dire warnings. The nonstop coverage of the ebola virus dominating the news. At this hour Health Officials trying to track down everybody that might have been exposed to ebola in the United States. Were talking endlessly about ebola the last few days. Do we need to . Are we reaching the point where the Mainstream Media are scaring people . Plus when the miami harold released the fling with donna rice . Did that usher in the media . This is media buzz. This began with a series of Washington Post scoops proving that the secret service was misleading the public. The white house being hit by high powered bullets three years ago. They overpowered a nation and made it to the east room and the Washington Examiner reporting that an armed felon was allowed to get on an atlanta elevator with the president. After the week of unemotional testimony on the hill the p pundants kept asking how can she keep her job. The door was unlocked at the time of the entry. I dont think the security plan was properly executed and thats why im conducting a robust investigation. Do you think she should lose her job . Yeah, i dont think she can survive this. I have to say that Julia Pearson who testified today in front of the house she has to go. The white house spokesman defended the emotiodirector at briefly. Are you telling me this morning the president of the United States and first lady have confidence in Julia Pearson to run an agency thats supposed to protect their daughters. Yes. That was just a few hours later. Joining us now to analyze the medias role, cheryl atkinson, steve hays Senior Writer for the Weekly Standard and Fox News Contributor and Michael Colum r columnist for the daily beast. Did it make it impossible for her to survive in the secret service . It is naive to think that alone caused the decision. I would say the media felt it had a green light to make the criticism because it was not a criticism of the administration per say. It was more of a defense of president obama and they felt like that was a criticism it was fair to make. Whenever single guests that comes on says should she go. Why does she have a job . Does it become impossible for the media world to talk about anything else . It contributes to the flood of coverage that we saw. The media uncovered so many things that the president and his own advisors didnt know. The secret service hadnt even levelled with the white house. It was very clear in the initial story about the fence jumper the secret service had mislead the American People or at least allowed someone to mislead the American People and i think at that point the media is going to pile on because journalists like nothing worse than putting out a story without the facts. What about that real spectacle where just a few hours later the president felt new leadership was needed. Really weird and really strange and the typical ritual that any white house goes through with any party and the press person holds fire until the decision is made back behind the scenes but Peter Johnson was right in the clip you played. She so you have resigned out of honor long before this was forced on her and the white house, the white house should have, you know, compelled that behavior out of her, let us say, earlier than it did. Yeah, famously he doesnt like to fire anyone and not quickly. In this case he didnt have a choice. Now they drove the story with the exclusives. With your investigative background talk about why sources within an agency would go to a reporter rather than complain to their bosses. In my experience the last thing they want to do is go to a reporter. Most of them dont like reporters. Most of them by the time theyre that desperate for whatever they think is the truth to be told they have rung the bells inside of the agency. It can be risky to go to the press. Absolutely but they feel like theyre at their witts end and theyre willing to put it all out there. One source quoted an agent by name. She was afraid to tell her bosses about the fact that all of these bullets hit the white house. Secret service couldnt figure it out but that made it into the press. What about the gender question. Julia pearson stepped down. She got the job because she was a woman after the prostitution and drinking scandal. Is that fair to introduce gender . Its fair to ask that question. There arent that many women and not men. I dont get wrapped up too much of that. Some doors opened for me because im a woman and some doors probably shut for me but most of us it evens out. What about the postgame spin. Julie pearson spoke to Bloomberg News and said the media have made it clear this is what they expected. She wanted to make herself the victim. She was basically taking the fall and doing the honorable thing all be it a little bit belated but i dont think thats a solid argument. Theres not many people likely to agree with her. The string of problems that is secret service has had both before she came into office and after doomed her and the fact that she came in suggesting that she was there to change the culture and plainly the culture didnt change at ultimately. What was shocking to me is once the door is hitting you on the way out then the leaks start so there was an unnamed official quoted as saying she wanted to have a more friendly approach to security kind of like disneyworld where she worked as a costume character in high school. That struck me as not being terribly agenerous because shes already leaving. You dont know if thats something she pushed or if its an offhand comment she made to somebody at one time. But it certainly didnt help her. You ask why whistleblowers come forward. They have those that persist between administration to administration and cultures that persist and i doubt this is something raised in the past couple of months or incidents we heard about. Theres probably a high level of frustration among a lot of officials. Things like this may be happening for a long time and it finally boiled over. As washington feeding frenzies go and weve all seen a lot of them this is one of your more legitimate ones. We would all agree on that. We cannot tolerate these kinds of activities and these kind of things happening. This doesnt get you fired what would you pay to lose your job in the administration. But heres what bothers me. Understandably, legitimately, justify bli were upset to learn this guy jumped the fence. He had a knife. He had guns in his car. He didnt make it just inside the door. He made it all the way to the east room and then the incident in the elevator which is unfathomable and now weve all moved on and the underlying problems havent been solved by the resignation and its the same thing we saw with the va scandal where we declared the story to be over. I dont think she has and as long as shes on the case were going to keep getting these stories. Shes done an amazing job. But there is this tendency to not stick with bureaucratic problems because its less sexy than is so and so going to lose his or her job. I think interest falls off quickly where as it shouldnt in many cases. The medias appetite goes from hot to cold and i think theres plenty of air time to cover all the different stories as well as the follow up on big stories like this. So i hope we keep at it. Okay. Lets switch now to isis because i want to play some sound showing this is of course what president obama said on 60 minutes and the reaction to it particularly in the White House Briefing room. How did they end up where they are in control of so much territory . Yeah. Was that a complete surprise to you . Well, i think our head of the Intelligence Community jim clapper acknowledged that i think they underestimated what had been taking place in syria. This is one of your key people on iraq who was raising this alarm in november of last year. Did this message get to the president . Did he believe it . Did he not hear it . What happened . The Administration Says the president was not blaming James Clapper. And the media says of course he was. Who is right . Of course hes blaming James Clapper. Its very unusual for him to come forward and lay blame at somebody by name like that. I can only thinkellow democrats or public pressure polls told him there has to be a mea culpa and either James Clapper agreed to be the bunching bag or found himself the punching bag but he did and a lot of people i speak to dont think he is probably to blame for all of the things that the president seems to be blaming him for. But there was a punching bag the New York Times story next day unnamed intelligence officials quoted one of them said some of us were pushing the reporting on the chaos in syria in the past but the white house didnt Pay Attention to it. It wasnt a big priority. Is that good reporting or is there an aspect here where the media can be used by unnamed sources. What . The media used . Absolutely thats happening but i think in this case it had additional validity because you have seen so many Public Officials make this case beforehand. You had the head of the Defense Intelligence agency say in congressional testimony th isis problem is a growing problem we have to get in front of it and that didnt happen. So you had sort of on the Public Record a series of officials over a long period of time saying this is going to be a crisis unless we dont confront it so when the president said and you have the president dismissing earlier saying this is the Junior Varsity. This is the Junior Varsity so by the time the president tried to shift blame to James Clapper it was much less believable for reporters covering the story on a regular basis. Michael, you personally believe the president should have acted and armed the Syrian Rebels two years ago but is it fair to say that the president ignored these warnings as opposed to made a decision which maybe wasnt the right decision to not escalate u. S. Military involvement. I dont think we know enough to say that but what we can certainly say fairly is he wanted the sere juan problem to go away and he didnt want anything to do with it and he saw i think he anticipated it might have been his and he was just really very reluctant to get involved with it. Maybe that made him reluctant to Pay Attention to the intelligence he should have paid and theres the question of Public Opinion and congress didnt want any part of it and he backed away but the public didnt want it either. If 60 or 70 of the public is against bombing as he was considering doing the bombing in august of 2013 when the stories of the chemical gassing were coming out congress would not have approved. The public didnt approve so thats something hes paying attention to Public Opinion. We cant know what might have happened but its interesting and i want to talk more. Let me get a break. Send me a tweet about our show. Well read some messages in a moment. More on the media debate of isis and the saturation cover of the ebola virus and later did the gary heart scandal turn once president obama appeared to blame intelligence officials for underestimating the terrorists in iraq and syria they began digging out sound bites from the last year of Administration Officials warning about the terrorists. Tonight a paper trail is emerging about warnings of the growing threat of isis as far back as last winter. Earlier this year they announced a campaign of terror. Theres no question that isil is a group growing roots in syria and iraq. Its important to focus on where the violence is coming from. Its coming from al qaeda and its affiliates. But we are confident they will not succeed. Our media buzz Research Team did some digging and found that those clip hearsay virtually no coverage in major media out lets. Wheres the media in all of this . Heres my cynical viewpoint. It would have been on the front page had the administration wanted it to be on the front page. The media waits for the administration to dictate the agenda and coverage. Why do they do that . Easier . Safer . A complicated set of reasons but it has to do with easier, laziness, support for the administration. Support in general for the powers that be. Wanting to tow the line but i guarantee you that if there had been headlines or the administration wanted concerns about terrorism to be on the front burner quite the opposite happened and i see this whole question about isis as another point in the continuum that the administration apparently wanted to down play concerns about terrorism buy and large. But would the benefit of hindsight if the situation was so dire and the terrorists are growing in their ability to murder people and grab land, did the media fall down on the job . I think so. What were seeing now is a man festation of a debate taking place behind the scenes in the Intelligence Community for years now. The Administration Made the argument leading up to the 2012 election and aftermath that al qaeda was on the run or it was decimated or destroyed and you had folks in the Intelligence Community mostly at the Defense Intelligence agency or cia and elsewhere saying precisely the opposite. No, this threat is growing. Al qaeda is expanding and they control more territory than ever and what you see is that rear its head in the form of this debate over isis. A personal story two years ago i was told some of the same things president obama just said about how terrorists were using social media to exploit where these uprisings happened and so on and i proposed a story that would look at the regional impact to look in the big picture because my sources were saying these things were connected. What happened . The cbs managers were not interested. So i firmly believe had the white house put that on the front burner and suggested a story like that or let us we would have. When the terrorists seized falluja in january. There were a couple. More on fox and cnn. That was an opportunity and it was covered as an iraq story as opposed to any threat to the United States. Exactly. It was in degree and kind. It was really different from what ultimately happened in mosul and this is not to defend the media from falling down on the job, quite the contrary but its fair to say the mosul situation where the iraqi army dropped their weapons and ran and mosul being close to baghdad and is that was the event that made everybody wake up and until then without the administration putting it on the agenda it just wasnt going to bubble up to the top. I think one reason is that iraq and syria were seen as distant. Depressing story. Not good for ratings so it didnt bubble up until it seemed like a threat to the United States of america. Thank you for joining us this sunday. Coming up with ebola dominating the airways have the media moved from reporter to fear mongering . And the secret Service Scandal and doing combat at the white house. The ebola story spread across the media like a frightening virus. Residents locked down in the Texas Department where the man with the first case of the disease diagnosed in the United States is staying. We are covering it all. We begin in dallas where ebola has the city on edge this morning as we learn more about the man infected with the virus. Ebola here in the United States. Tonight theres growing fears it could spread. It touched our extended family. A photo journalist working with dr. Nancy snyderman and her team in liberia tested positive for ebola. Joining us now is director of the school media and Public Affairs at the George Washington university. Is this saturation coverage of ebola contributing to a sense of fear in the public . To some extent justified and to some extent not. A headline grabbed me, passenger collapses and dies getting off flight. But this story is all about fear and fear sells. I was watching cnn the other day and they did not come off the ebola story for one minute. They have plenty of company here and i do think we should point out the news organizations most of them are trying to be responsible but the coverage and hour by hour updates and news conferences can convey a sense that something terrible has happened. Theres a real story here. Its a mystery. The best line i saw was in the Washington Post today. This is a biological and psychological plague and fear can spread faster than the virus and thats true. We dont know what surrounds this. How large the numbers are. How big its going to get. Its confounded and thats a great piece in the post today. It has confounded the World Health Organization and cdc. So theres a real journalistic story here. What went wrong . Whats happening now . How many are going to die but its so easy to take a story like this and go plunging off the deep end because fear spreads faster than the virus. Right. Its a story thats international in scope if you look at the United States. Four or five confirmed cases and yet i get the impression and again its not just television. Its websites, its front pages of newspapers that its being covered as a calamity andepidem we have a man in dallas and we hope he survives. Its a relationship story. Its our job to look into that. But in the United States alone 36,000 people are expected to die from the flu. Right. So when you keep it in perspective there that means theres too much we dont know and thats what feeds the journalism and Public Interest. Is there a Positive Side to the coverage in the sense that in this situation strange new virus we dont know enough about it that the media can help to educate americans about ebola. It is a teachable moment and one thing thats very important that has to come out of this is for people to understand that in this world where globalization is a reality boarders dont matter on many things. This is one of them. I mean they matter because this is where we try to stop and take peoples temperatures but thats a fallible process. Can people learn more about the world . Can we learn that what happens to an african is as important as what happens to an american and they become interchangeable. So does that engage us with the world . I hope so. Theres huge Public Interest in the story. Everywhere i go people are talking about it but if it wasnt good for ratings it wouldnt be there hour after hour. Isnt that a probably but the its good for ratings is because people are concerned. Theyre afraid. I was talking with a neighbor yesterday here in washington. He works for the city government. He says people there are asking whether they should hold a blanket or, you know, theyre processing. I went on social media. Heres one big ou Texas Football game in dallas should fans be concerned about attending the game. Its good for a sense. Its good for ratings because people are worried and theyre scared and thats where the media is supposed to be doing their job explaining. I think its a question of volume and i think the level here is getting a little bit too loud. Are we hyperventilating . Because thats bad for your health and its bad for journalism. Media is very good at that. Thank you very much for joining us. My pleasure. Ahead on media buzz president obama taking another shot at fox news and up next we go to the white house where i asked ed henry about covering the secret service, isis and are those press meetings really theater . Deadline. Ill see you at the top of the hour. Lets go back to media buzz. For three days in a row you and other white house officials seemed calm about the idea that a man got into the east room and another man got inches away from the president with a gun. Wheres the out rage . Wheres the we cant believe this happened . Its true that the president and everyone here has full confidence in the men and women of the United States secrete service. For more on the challenges of covering the president i drop by the white house. When an intruder hopped the fence behind me and the whole secret service mess erupted you kept asking if the president had full confidence is that a bit of a dance . I was stunned that he appeared to be not that stunned by the whole thing. You said where is the outrage. The third day after she resi resigned tnchts white house said well were investigating this. Something horrible could have happened. Now i understand theyre also doing a dance we should respect which is theyre trying to keep morale in the secret service up because theyre getting pounded and the last thing you want to do is attack an agency protecting the president or trying to. Its delicate. Did this hit home not only because the president s life jeopardized but you work here and see these agents every day. I do and i know and respect them and most of the agents and officers i know are out standing Law Enforcement officials. We focus on the bad moments and you should because theyre a big deal, big mistakes but most times we get it right and that should be part of the story as well. I was live on air a couple of weeks ago, a week before the latest fence jumper and on the air a guy jumped over the fence behind me and everybody laughed about it later but it was scary at the time and it was significant because i saw dogs on this guy. I saw men with large weapons and they snuffed it out quickly. The fact that the next time they failed catastrophically is a big problem and they sort of fluffed it off as well the president wasnt here. This white house is a target 24 7 and there are reporters and staffers and tourists from all around america. This can be a hazardous assignment. You asked about the president appearing to push off responsibility for the underestimating. He didnt appear to. He did. He blew it off and said he wasnt blaming james and throwing him under the bus and sometimes the white house forgets the president is on tape. Theres a transcript. We were talking about this a minute ago. Bottom line is we heard what the president said on 60 minutes. I said lets go back to the question. When he asked were you surprised mr. President by the rise of isil he shifted it to clapper. Will they try to play more games. Sure they want to play games but the president asked a question about himself said well James Clapper and they and the Intelligence Community. Not me or we. And thats why i asked him, isnt this a team . Isnt this the president , director of National Intelligence and he said yes but thats not what the president said in 60 minutes. Isnt it a bit of theater. You want you asking a tough question that you can use on fox later . You use those clips. Are all of your questions fair . No. Were not perfect. Are all your questions fair meaning sometimes youre trying to prod them. Youre always trying to prod them into something provocative. I make no apologies for that. If you just sit there and ask a nonprovocative question youre not going to get an answer and youre going to keep them on the talking points. Dana calls me an equal opportunity blank, it starts with an a. Because she didnt like the questions i was asking her when she was in the bush administration. So no matter who is in power take them on. At that point you were at cnn. Does the white house treat you differently since you have come to fox . The president takes some pokes publicly at fox. But i think it would be disingenuous of me to pretend the relationship isnt different. He comes after fox and they feel like were pressing him hard. But i make no apologieapologies. A woman went on my Facebook Page and saw me on oreilly and thought i was too nice to the president. Go back to cnn or wherefore you came from. Theres people in the fox audience that think im too nice to the president. You know what, if you have some people mad at you on the left and some people mad at you on the right that youre not too tough hopefully youre right. I like that. Thanks for joining me. Good to see you. Ed henry was at the Washington Nationals playoff game last night the won lost in 18 heartbreaking innings. I ran into one of the mascots here in the green room. Never know who youre going to meet in the green room. Ahead on media buzz, is it unethical for a british paper to create a fake account to lure a politician into sexting . That episode is blamed for the rise of gotcha journalism. He. Gary hearts president ial campaign imploded after miami harold reporters staked out his washington townhouse and disclosed his relationship with donna rice. An actress with whom he sailed on a boat called monkey business. You may recognize this anchor. President ial candidate gary heart dismissed allegations hes a womanizer challenging reporters to follow him around. Hart lied publicly on three occasions by attacking the harold reporters. Who after publishing a false story macon seed they got it right. We made no such concession. We did not and do not. And who most outrageously refused to interview the very people who could have given them the facts. Our reporters, one of whom had known hart well from the 1984 campaign entreated him to please make this woman available. He wouldnt. Isnt that a dark turning point for the media . I sat down with the author of the new book all the truth is out the week politics went tabloid. Welcome. Nice to be with you again. You suggest when gary hart was knocked out of the race thats the day they became the sex police and cared more about our character than the issues. We marked a turning point. That point was coming regardless. It was in the ether and someone was going to walk into it but that moment was a Tipping Point where from that period on you can measure a different process. Why is that a bad thing or sleazey thing . Because character is crucial and you can argue the president is no longer in with politicians. You could. Its not like the gold ood old were all so great. You read the book. The book is not a manifesto about privacy. The book is a story. Its a story i became completely obsessed with over time because here its the story of this man who was the Hilary Clinton of his moment. The prenumed nominee of the Democratic Party who finds himself literally backed up against a brick wall in an oil stained alley wearing a white hoodie surrounding or pinned in by four reporters asking him who is that woman in your house and did you have sex with her and are you cheating on your wife . Questions that had never been asked and in that allie i think is the shifting ground. The ground actually shifts in politics and journalism. Now we have a sex scandal every other week. But it reverberates through the years after and in his life. Thats the story i tell is not just about how it effects politics and political journalism but its a human gripping story of a man coming to terms with this. I think you ask all the right questions in this book but we differ on where you seem to come down when you suggest did the miami harold advocate its role in deciding whats most important and i would say the harold had solid information and acted on it. You suggest that the Washington Post that famously asked the question have you ever committed adultery that maybe he went too far. I would say he says distasteful but justified and i would say how do you not ask that question in the situation . Its one of the great things about a story like this. People are going to look at it all different ways. I dont know what decisions i would have made in that moment or you would have made in a that moment. These reporters were and are excellent journalists and were doing this long before i got on the scene. So in no way do i say i couldnt have made that decision. Are you torn about what the right path is . Were living with the echos of that today. Questions of privacy. How much do you ask about who is sleeping with who . In the book i deal with those conflicts very openly and what i do think is problematic regardless of the decisions made in the moment is that so much of that episode was then misremembered. What we remember of it is almost entirely wrong. For example the immortal quote Everybody Knows this that gary heart gave to the New York Times about follow me around people dont remember it. And they followed hart around for the rest of his life. The assumption that everyone has is well he said follow me around. Come into my bedroom and the press did and the press never left the bedroom of politicians and then hart changed the rules and set a new standard and everybody had to follow. Its not what happens. He did say that as a frustrated throw away line. He was talking to the New York Times magazine, my old publication. But when was it published. But the quote sat as they do in magazine queues and when the harold decides to undertake the surveillance, stake out the townhouse, confront him that quote is unknown. By the time they publish they have an advanced copy of the quote but they make it and reference it in their story and people think first the challenge and then the following. Its not true. Theres a great moment where you have gary hart at the press conference and he looked around the room and you say he knew that many of the reporters had been having affairs. A little bit of hypocrisy there. He is run through the series of questions. Is adultery immoral . Have you ever committed adultery. They remember it like it was yesterday. No one had ever heard a question like that in politics and hart does look out and he looks out at reporters he knew was having Adulterous Affairs and he goes through this process in his head. 24 hours later hes back to colorado. Thank you for joining us. Thank you. More of that conversation on our homepage this week. Our video verdict is up next. Test president obama returned to a familiar campaign theme, taking a swipe at fox news. This was a hot topic of conversation on fox and friends. Good Affordable Health care may seem like a feigned threat to the freedom of the American People on fox news, turns out it is working pretty well in the real world. Listen, i dont know why anybody would be upset about that. It is kind of a badge of honor. First of all, i think it is fair game, we are big boys. We have been very critical of the president and obamacare, and i think rightly so. Not like we think theres anything wrong with our reporting. I am with chris wallace. We dish it out, we ought to be able to take it. Obviously the president trying to portray obamacare as success, i dont think it helps him much, but journalists need to have a thick skin. Cnn anchor john better man interviewed someone about the awful fire in oklahoma where a fired worker beheaded a woman at a food plant, then he said this. Sick fast nation, any way you slice it, theres a woman dead, any way you slice it, and this man faces the Death Penalty likely any way you slice it. Ouch. Better man took to twitter to apologize saying i wish i havent. I made a terrible mistake, incredibly poor choice of words. I am sorry. I am not going to pylile on. But did you have to say it three times, john . Here is what i am buzzed off about. Cindy adams says if they dont remove chuck todd, make him remove the goatee. He wears the beard, reminds him of his dad. Why do we need to critique his facial hair anyway . Come on, welcome to our new feature where i sound out about my pet peeves. A british woman trapping a lawmaker. And a crazy scheme to get involved in the redskins controversy. Stay with us. In our press picks, this media fail. London daily mirror, so determined to expose politicians it created a fictitious woman to entice them on twitter. Fake account of a quote 20 something tori named sophie. He resigned after sending photos to the account, saying you must swear on a bibles you wont show picks as i promise not to show pics of you. This is entrapment. Pure and simple. Two other papers, the mail and sun rejected a scheme from the freelancer along these lines. The mirror defending it saying it had a clear Public Interest other than selling papers you mean . Now for top tweets, are the media scaring people about ebola or educating the public. I wish they cared as much about seasonal influenza since thousands in the u. S. Die every year. Thomas gordon. You had an ebola sufferer Walking Around dallas, how many other sufferers . None. And ken meyers, the story hyped for ratings, why educate the public when stupidity brings eyeballs to the screen. But it is an important story. This is an idea way out of bounds. They may fine station that is use the name redskins. Tom wheeler to tell reporters there are names and inscriptions we used over time that are inappropriate. I think the name attributed to the Washington Football Club is one of those. Whether you find the redskins name offensive, it is none of the governments business, period. The fact we trample on a free press to tow a politically correct line. The fcc should spike this dumb idea. Thats it. We hope you like our Facebook Page. We have videos, respond to your questions. Foxnews. Com buzz. Back next sunday with the latest buzz. Ms. Sit is monday october 6t. In a few hours an nbc news photographer with ebola returns to america. This as they screen every passenger entering our country. We are live with the breaking detail. He was in jail for murdering a Police Officer in cold blood. That did not stop him from speaking directly to college graduates. Taking Political Correctness to a whole new level. Will columbus day be Indigenous People day . Fox friends first starts right now. Good morning to you. You are watching Fox Friends First on this monday morning. We hope you had a great weekend. I am heather childers. I am ainsley earhardt. It is 59 minutes past the hour. In a few hours the nbc news cameraman infected in ebola will arrive in nebraska for treatment. The final decontamination phase in of the dallas apartment enters the finali phase. It is a tall order ainsley and heather. Atbatting sho ashoka took photographs in liberia. Now he is the story as he becomes the 5th american to fight the virus. He is reportedly in good spirits walking and eating on his own. That is an encouraging sign for doctors trying to help him recover from ebola. We have quit a bit of lead