murdoch's role in all of this chaos? brand-new reporting about that coming up. but, first, it is a literal political storm in the south. this week showed that the problem of parallel news universes, the problem with alternative realities of information does not just apply to politics. it even applies to the weather. it even affects the way that natural and man made disasters are perceived. texans were left in the dark and the aftermath is just starting. thankfully, the power is mostly back on. the weather is warming up in texas this weekend. but the water crisis is massive. disruptions in water systems are affecting 14 million texans right now. and don't forget about louisiana or oklahoma. both of those states also hard hit as well. so let's truth sandwich what happened in the past week. truth sandwich. start with the truth. the power outages in texas were largely due to problems at coal and gas fired plants. wind farms ran half of what was expected with some turbines frozen. those are the facts. i present those to you first because we will not show you the nonsense and the b.s. shared by right wing media. all focussed on blaming green energy. they seem so scared of the green new deal concepts. they were going and blaming windmills when the power plants failed. this is the parallel universe of news even when it comes to a natural disaster. and then of course man made disasters on top of those. so pro trump media outlets, yes, that's still a thing, focussed on progressives instead of holding lawmakers of both parties accountable. if natural disasters are not off limits thr the pollicization, what is? here with answers, cnn media analyst bill crowder. emily, most importantly, how are you and your neighbors doing? >> we are much better than we were just a couple of days ago. we have power back, water. about half of the state has water back. all of us are still boiling water. it has been apocalyptic to be sure. >> why was there this rush to blame green energy, the green new deal, democrats in a state run by republicans, fueled mostly by natural gas, coal, et cetera. >> first of all, fox's audience, they know their audience. they don't want to hear any criticism of conservatives. and the green new deal is a target for them because it is supported so much by liberals that it has to be wrong. fox and people were literally saying something like, well, there is great coal and oil power in texas. but in the dead of eight aoc stuck in and changed it to the green new deal. the argument they were making, and it was playing because that's what their audience wants to hear. frankly, in conservative circles, oil and gas, that's a big donor. you can't go after them. that's a whole other part of this. >> i wondered if that's a factor here. senator ron johnson said it is unreliable, wind and solar. has there been a lot of fact checking of this? >> there has been a lot of fact checking. local media has been extraordinary in this. if you read the texas tribute, the work they're doing is amazing. but the idea that we saw this being politicized. this was about renewables. it's not about renewables. this is a state that has never had to experience this kind of level of winterization. i do think this is going to further conversations around climate change in a state that has historically been reluctant to have those conversations. >> you were on twitter this week. the texas officials failed to communicate in the middle of this disaster. what went wrong from a public communication perspective? >> everything is the answer to that question. it has been extraordinary. just trying to get basic information. you know, there was no information in the leadup to this of how bad this might be and what to expect. we have a notice that we would lose power maybe for 10 to 40 minutes rotating blackouts. when that happened in our household, we never got power back. we didn't get power back for five days after that first rolling blackout. then there was no information letting us know things like, you know, it would be a good idea to fill your bathe tubs because we're about to lose water for a week or two weeks. a whole lot of finger pointing. i have to be honest, if local media weren't doing their jobs here, we would have next to no information. the dallas morning use, houston chronicle have been extraordinary and so valuable in this moment in history. >> yeah. let's show how local news rose to the challenge in texas in recent days. some newspapers that lost power lost the ability to print but stayed online and stayed in touch with customers that way. and, emily, your former outlet, the texas tribute, it set up a text messaging system to give updates to readers in need. what is the take-away here all about local news? >> the take-away here is that you can't count on anybody else in a crisis like this. these were journalists, our journalists to date who are still doing their jobs by plugging in their devices in cars, by picking each other up in four wheel drives to sleep on the floor in news rooms. i'm so lucky my staff is distributed around the country. over the last couple of days i have had employees sleeping on air mattresses from our home. i have reporters coming to my house to shower with this limited water trickle we have. i mean, these are dire straits and these local journalists are doing the lord's work. >> it was hard for some national outlets to get into the texas because of the roads and the flight cancellations. news rooms of all sizes need disaster plans in the same way that every family needs a plan for where to go in an energy. news rooms need those backups as well. standby for one minute. i want to bring you back in a moment because we have to talk and ted cruz. he became a symbol of every fat cat politician who ignores the citizens when they need him. it is worth examining how this happened because not too long ago, cruz could have run off to cancun and no one would have known. the people on the plane would have had no real-time proof he was there. but in the digital crowd sourced age, the photo proof started popping up on twitter before he even boarded the plane. that was just the start of the digital sleuthing. others shared pictures too and triangulated cruz's location. and then reporters starting asking questions, forcing cruz to book a return ticket home. crowd sourcing turned into crowd shaming. he blamed his kids. but the truth could not be controlled. cruz wanted to help his family, right, so he fled to mexico. someone in a group chat with cruz's wife leaked the text messages to prove it. this story had the ample students for crowd sleuthing and vicious mocking while americans, quote, spent another day trapped in front of their screens. to me this was a story about inequality. cruz had the money to fly his family out of the cold. many texans did not. if cruz had spent more money, he could have flown private and avoided the prying eyes of his voters. this is all about equality. all right. let's unpeel more layers of this story with a national investigative reporter at "the washington post" and coauthor of the best selling book, a very stable genius coming out in paper back with more reporting this tuesday. when you are working on an investigation these days, do you feel like you are competing with internet investigators, the kind that figured out where cruz was going this week? >> brian, thanks for having me back. and of course everybody is a competitor, right? this is a pretty tough, cut throat business. we all want the story first. we all want it accurately. but i think the version of what's been shared here has happened many times before, and you have seen it too. in this case there were internet sleuths, but there was also somebody leaking the united passenger information, which was pretty striking. i gather there is an investigation into that. those kind of leaks have been happening for a long time. electrica that's not supposed to be shared. you might remember when donald trump was accusing his treasury department of something, somebody actually faces criminal charges now for leaking information that they shouldn't have to show that the president wasn't telling the truth. >> wow. >> and this happened when we covered guantanamo. we were literally watching flights of prisoners being taken to dark sights. so this has been happening for a while in different forms, and that kind of competition will happen on all platforms. >> there are all these conversations about the ethics of leaking a group text chain, right? all these people worried their friends will leak on them. does it matter to you the motive or does it just matter if it's accurate? >> i totally love that question. i think it's really important that the information, first and foremost, be accurate. that's what you care about. but you have got to shift through the motives, too. i've had sources who have had bad, if you would call them, attack motives, but when their information is verified and true and you know what those motives are, you're not flying blind, the most important thing is that it's accurate. your point, though, is so fascinating that people are worried about their group chats being shared. i still remember brett kavanaugh's remark to his friends when they went out boating. a bunch of guys, remember, we're not sharing any of these texts and details of our trip. this stays on the boat. >> stays on the boatment bill, let's broaden out beyond the stories this week about texas. the texas crisis was unfolding while the conservative media world was mourning. rush limbaugh has been remembered as a hero to some. he was a bar binger of many political changes in this country. now the governor will fly the flags at half-staff in florida in the coming days. what is your reaction to that decision? >> well, it's kind of shocking because, first of all, you know the governor of florida is playing for conservative attention in doing that. but the jhe had a huge followin. but he wasn't a heroic figure. he had a lot of incidents that were extremely questionable and his views were pretty ugly and they hurt a lot of people. they hurt some people personally. a lot of people are saying why are you celebrating a guy who attacked barack obama on race, singing barack the magic negro and extremely outrageous things that the conservatives loved. they loved him for that. he established the brand. he did. it was a brand. but to make it a heroic thing that should be celebrated like a war hero, i find that questionable. >> carol, for your book, just spoke with hundreds of sources about donald trump. he came out of mar-a-lago hibernation to pay respects, calling in to fox and newsmax for the first time. he did all three channels on the same day. the company is trying to squash speculation that trump could take over for rush on the radio. they said, no, we're not considering trump as a replacement. but do we have any sense that is possible down the road, you know, maybe months from now once -- understand trump is looking for a new media megaphone in the months ahead? >> based on my, you know, experience reporting on donald trump and many advisers that stay around him right now, i find that's something we should probably bet against. there is no question that donald trump is going to be a voice in the -- after he comes out of this short period of wilderness. he wants to be center stage, and he will reclaim that stage again. as we know how, he's going to be at c-pac in a couple of days. i'd day eight days in orlando, the republican gathering where he will tend to his conservative flock. there is no question he will do that. but this is a visual guy, brian. we all know what he likes is the television. so it is hard to imagine him as really a radio man. he likes television. that's always been his favorite place. it's where he analyzed his own presidency, where he rated his own cabinet secretaries, where he decided who should represent him or not based on their visual presentation. that's what he cares about the most deeply. so i find his ideas about going to work with newsmax, creating his own television channel much more likely. >> all right. now from the former occupant of the white house to the current administration. president biden reached a big audience with a town hall. vice president harris, too. i want to point out part of the vp's media strategy happening under the radar. harris recorded a call-in interview with a black-owned and operating radio station in l.a. harris is doing outreach on the radio to counter resistance to the covid-19 vaccine among black americans. before all these other interviews, the very first national interview was with your website, the 19th. what does this tell us about the biden administration's media outreach. >> that they're looking for a bigger tent and they think there is a true strategy is not going after the big dogs, the major news organizations that have sort of had a monopoly on this. she is trying to reach women. she is trying to reach underserved marginalized the communities. so i think it's really been f fascinating to watch their rollout in this regard and you should expect to see more of it. >> it is important to see where they're doing these interviews and what questions they're taking on. bill, do you feel like the country is still juggling the past and present or are we at the point where trump calls into newsmax and reaches a small base audience and, you know, the rest of the country forgets he's there. >> i don't think anybody is forgetting he's there. obviously, that will -- there is a long standing issue with his presence in american culture, so i don't think he's going away that way. i do think there are a lot of people who want to move on or trying to move on. i think it is interesting looking at the late night lineup of what the monologues are doing. they're going to get riled up about it. but cruz takes over. cruz was hugely the subject on "saturday night live" last night. that was the target last night. you could see they will move on to whoever is, you know, most prominently making a fool of himself. but i think trump will continue to make noise. when he makes noise, people will pay attention. >> and how much did the mayor american news outlets, not oan but cnn, washington post, how much coverage does trump merit when he goes to c-pac or when he calls into oan? >> brian, i totally agree with bill. i mean, this president, the 45th president as he likes to call himself now on letterhead is not going anywhere. we will hear from him again. and the important thing is his relevance. he wants to be center stage, but the issue becomes the coverage is determined by whether or not he is the force he thinks he is. he's got a huge following. if he's still the guy controlling the levers of a huge portion of the republican party, if he's still the guy making people in congress make decisions based on his wishes, if he still is instilling fear the way he was when he complained that those 17 republicans who voted against him during impeachment should watch out for their back, if he's still that force, then he's still relevant to all of us in the news business. >> he's a big story. thank you all for being here. coming up, the media mistakes peppering covid vaccine coverage. and mark zuckerberg turning off the news in australia. this is a stunning move by facebook. it's never happened before. what it means for the rest of the world next. dana-farber cancer institute discovered the pd-l1 pathway. pd-l1. they changed how the world fights cancer. blocking the pd-l1 protein, lets the immune system attack, attack, attack cancer. pd-l1 transformed, revolutionized, immunotherapy. pd-l1 saved my life. saved my life. saved my life. what we do here at dana-faber, changes lives everywhere. everywhere. everywhere. everywhere. everywhere. we're carvana, the company who invented car vending machines and buying a car 100% online. now we've created a brand-new way for you to sell your car. whether it's a year old or a few years old. we wanna buy your car. so go to carvana and enter your license plate answer a few questions. and our techno wizardry calculates your car's value and gives you a real offer in seconds. when you're ready, we'll come to you, pay you on the spot and pick up your car, that's it. so ditch the old way of selling your car, and say hello to the new way at carvana. woman: i have moderate to severe plaque psoriasis. now, there's skyrizi. ♪ things are getting clearer ♪ ♪ yeah i feel free ♪ ♪ to bare my skin, ♪ ♪ yeah, that's all me ♪ ♪ nothing and me ♪ ♪ go hand in hand ♪ ♪ nothing on my skin, that's my new plan ♪ ♪ nothing is everything ♪ woman: keep your skin clearer with skyrizi. with skyrizi, 3 out of 4 people achieved 90% clearer skin at 4 months. of those, nearly 9 out of 10 sustained it through 1 year. and skyrizi is 4 doses a year, after 2 starter doses. ♪ i see nothing in a different way ♪ ♪ and it's my moment so i just gotta say ♪ ♪ nothing is everything ♪ skyrizi may increase your risk of infections and lower your ability to fight them. before treatment, your doctor should check you for infections and tuberculosis. tell your doctor if you have an infection or symptoms such as fevers, sweats, chills, muscle aches, or coughs or if you plan to, or recently received a vaccine. ♪ nothing is everything ♪ woman: now is the time to ask your dermatologist about skyrizi. washed your hands a lot today? 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(doorbell) (giggle) do ya think they bought it? oh yeah. now a history of digital news. let's see if we can do it in 45 seconds. >> publishing was once about scarcity. one city had one or two newspapers. then the internet changed everything. google sorted the world's linked. facebook let everyone connect and they made millions, billions, fortunes by being the go betweens connecting you to me and you to news. news owners like rupert murdoch watched their relationships with readers get blown up. so they are trying to take back power and profits. enter this week's big headline from australia. facebook banning news publishers from sharing links and banning you to post links to australian news outlets. looking to force tech platforms to pay up, to pay news publishers for the right to link to content. this means something dramatic not just in australia but around the world. there are other proposals like this in other countries. all eyes, all regulatory eyes are now on australia to see what happens next. facebook's move to ban news, basically, had a global impact. you can see what happened right away. news traffic dropping on these australian websites. according to reuters, leaders of the g7 summit discussed the issue days ago. that is what facebook has done. google has taken a different approach and start to cut deals with publishers, including rupert murdoch's news corporation. this means that google is paying undisclosed sums of money to big news publishers. what about the little guys? what about the upstarts that want to with the next rupert murdoch? what is the right way to rebalance the relationship between these technologies that have gobbled up the world and news publishers that are trying to keep everybody informed? can the relationship be rebalanced? that's what's at stake in this conversation. with me now is the minister of canadian heritage and a member of the canadian parliament. that thank you for joining me. you are watching this like your fellow leaders all around the world. >> that's correct. >> is canada going to follow australia's lead? >> first, thank you for having me, brian. real pleasure to be here. second, i have announced that canada will be -- i will be tabling legislation in the coming months to do in essence what australia is trying to do. will we follow the exact same model? probably not. it will be a made in canada approach because our institutions, our lawyers, our regulations are different. but in essence, yes. >> what is the argument for why google and facebook should pay news publishers? they invented a better mouse trap, right? why should they now have to pay up. a lot of tech execs say this feels like a shake down by news publishers. >> i would echo what your own ho house of representatives have said. without a healthy media and news sector, we cannot have sustainable democracies. and what we're doing is just to ensure that google and facebook compensate fairly the media for their use of their content. that's what we're talking about. >> do we really want to get into the business of taxing links, though? facebook is not -- they're not hosting the news. they're just, you know, providing a platform to share it. and then people click the links and go off to a website and view the news and they view advertisements there, too. >> well, both of these companies make a lot of money out of the news content that they use. there is a debate arguably about how much money. and i have seen all sorts of figures floating around and what australia and flans and us and canada. but other countries, just last week i was on a call with australia, germany, france, finland and soon many other countries will join this initiative that was started by canada to figure out how do we do this and every country will go about it in its own way. but the essence is to continue we have a healthy media sector. it is not about overtaxing. i mean, if these companies are making money out of the news content from publishers, just like copyright for artists or musicians, they should be fairly compensated. >> there has been a lot of debate about the australian model, how they're doing this. you are saying you are going to look at a different model. some people are saying, hey, the idea here is right. facebook and google should pay up. but the way australia is doing it will be wrong. you are saying there will be a different canadian model, right? >> that's correct. i should say something about what we've seen in australia. facebook didn't just cut link to news outlets but also to government -- to government websites, including websites in australia, information on covid, suicide hotline. and i saw a facebook spokesperson say that it was an oversight. hold on a second here. an oversight? i mean, if we needed a clear example of why these companies need to be regulated, facebook just handed this to us on a silver platter. >> very interesting. thank you so much for being here. >> thank you, brian. for another view of this debate because everybody in the entire news industry is watching what's happening in australia. also, the creator and managing editor of magazine. jeff, thanks for coming on the program. you helped give me my start in my career almost two decades ago by linking to my blog. so this is all about links, right? google and facebook, that's what they do. they link. they send us off in different directions. so is the australian idea right or wrong? >> oh, it's very wrong. this is blackmail by rupert murdoch and it breaks the web. the problem here is that google and facebook are not paying for news. they're sending audiences, as you said earlier, to these publishers. if anybody should pay anybody, the publishers should play the platforms for the value they get. but what happened here is murdoch who owns 70% of the newspaper industry in australia is cashing in his political capitol to get protectionist legislation to try to force the platforms to pay him money and also disadvantage startups that may compete with him. >> so now i don't know who to root for here. isn't the bigger concern about smaller news outlets that actually are in the worst financial position. what about them? >> exactly. this law might go to denmark. one of my students has a small operation in denmark. i saw her on twitter moments ago saying why punish me. let's remember, brian, if you look at canada, the largest newspaper in canada by far is post media, and it is owned and controlled by a hedge fund that also owns the national inquirer. here in the u.s., our newspaper chains are all controlled by hedge funds or exhausted families. so would the money go to journalists or would it go to hedge fund owners? >> about that, there was a news about the news this week. a hedge fund already is the biggest shareholder of tribune now wants to take over the rest of the tribune. they are notorious for slashing funds and cutting staff. here may be a sipp of good news. the baltimore sun might be able to escape all of it and be taken over by a local businessman who wants to buy the baltimore sun and preserve it as a nonprofit. is this the future of news, you either get financialized by a hedge fund and get cut to the bone or become a nonprofit newspaper. are these the models. >> we should all hope that local news could have a thousand jeff bezos who have done wonderfully at "the washington post." but the washington times promised to standby it and this week there are reports it was going to sell. he denies that, but we'll see what happens. it depends on the local owner you have. some of them are better, and some of them are not. >> what about this idea that, you know, there should be some way to have facebook and google support the local news ecosystem, that it shouldn't just all be hedge funds or nonprofit status. i know you are going the rupert murdoch blackmail, but is there some model that would work? >> if you want to tax google and facebook straight out, fine. but who is to say that newspaper owners are the entitled recipients of that money. if you are going to tax the platforms more because they make a lot of money, fine. why wouldn't that go to education or to internet access for people or to our health care? why are newspaper publishers so entitled? you and i watched this industry for many years and i'm a journalism professor. i have worked in it. but i have also seen how the newspaper society failed miserably to update for this current reality. it is their fault. >> interesting. jeff, thank you so much for coming on. check out this week's "reliable sources" podcast. he has a proposal for refundable tax credits to help the news business. coming up, a stunner cover of the new york times. a big announcement about my book. and we will fact check all the false claims about the future of fact checking. ntly and other money managers don't understand why. 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(upbeat music) get the food you love with perks from- - [crowd] grubhub. it's moving day. and while her friends are doing the heavy lifting, jess is busy moving her xfinity internet and tv services. it only takes about a minute. wait, a minute? but what have you been doing for the last two hours? delegating? oh, good one. move your xfinity services without breaking a sweat. now that's simple, easy, awesome. xfinity makes moving easy. go online to transfer your services in about a minute. get started today. and welcome back to "reliable sources." i'm brian stelter. this should be a simple question. what's the future of fact checking now ta trump is out of office? but the question is fraught with complexity and allegations of bias and shots of false equivalence. so let's fact check what you have heard about fact checking. joining me now is daniel dale, cnn's resident fact checker and the editor in chief of politicfact. i see a lot of things that have nothing to do with trump or biden. has the end of the trump administration freed you up for other fact checking? >> well, it's an interesting time whenever you transform from one administration to the other. certainly trump was a very distinctive president and personality in the news scene, and his endless cascade of words has freed us up to fact check other things. like this week we spent most of our time fact checking the power outages in texas. and i'm not sure we should have gotten as much work done if trump had still been in office making the false claim that the election was rigged. >> yeah. which he's still doing, by the way. we'll get to that in a minute. here is a viewer question from kevin. do you have it easier now that biden is potus instead of trump? >> i wouldn't say easier because there is still so much nonsense and disinformation in the world. but there is less from the president. we know biden speaks less. he tweets less and he lies less when he talks and tweets. trump was a unique case. that doesn't mean biden is perfect. he sometimes exaggerates and embell embellishments. >> look at what's on screen right now. we have three of your recent fact checks. there were mistakes at the town hall at cnn this week. >> that's right. what we see from biden is basically more like a smattering of falsehood. but he's not perfect. again, there is other people to fact check. in february i fact checked. for example, this week there was a fake twitter screen shot purporting to be from ted cruz. there wasn't. a liberal super pac was making about senator rubrubio. i fact there is so much to fact check. i'm not going on vacation. i'm not going to be unemployed. there is so much to do. >> and the number one priority is to check biden, is to hold him accountable. >> that's right. so people saying you're not -- you know, people accusing me of bias suggesting i'm not going to do that. i'm reading his every word intensively. but because he talks less, because he lies less, there is time to do other people in addition to him. not instead of him but in addition to him. >> here's the associated press looking at trump's interviews on right wing tv this week. trump repeated his false claim about the election being stolen ten times. obviously, his friendly interviewers are not fact checking him. but the rest of the press still is. is there still follow up about trump's lies? >> we will still fact check former president donald trump. but the fact of the matter is when you are not the president anymore, you get less scrutiny. now i think we're going to see a very unusual post presidency from donald trump. he said he intends to stay active in republican pal olitic. when he says something that's provocative and sounds wrong in a high profile setting, we will fact check him. but that's not going to be the case all the time. for example, he put out a statement against mitch mcconnell. we reviewed it and we found a lot of personal attacks and a new factual claims, but they just didn't seem to rise to the level of us fact checking him. so we will be judicious about our choices. >> here is another headline. this is from cnn this week. governor cuomo in new york saying he should have been more aggressive against kus death misinformation. he's kind of blaming the media for the newfound scrutiny about nursing home deaths. do you think cuomo has been given an easy break by the media and that situation is changing? >> i think the situation is complicated. there are goings to criticize about how the cuomo administration handled data. but the heart of the matter goes back to last year when the state was asking nursing homes to take in patients, covid patients who were ready to be discharged from the hospital. we don't see hard evidence that that made a significant difference in covid deaths. if you look at the statistics, new york is about having the same numbers as other states around the country. and the issue was employees, workers in the nursing homes who didn't realize they were bringing covid-19 into the nursing homes. so it is a really complicated situation. there is not clear-cut answers here. >> thank you both for coming on. for all the day's media news, sign up for our newsletter at reliablesources.com. amid heart break there is hope about the coronavirus, about vaccines. we will talk about how that vaccine news should be covered next. like $0 copays on virtual visits... ♪ wow ♪ uh-huh $0 copays on primary care visits and lab tests. ♪ wow ♪ uh-huh plus, $0 copays on hundreds of prescription drugs. ♪ wow ♪ uh-huh unitedhealthcare medicare advantage plans. including the only plans with the aarp name. most plans have a $0 premium. it's time to take advantage. ♪ wow look, this isn't my first rodeo it's time to take advantage. and let me tell you something, i wouldn't be here if i thought reverse mortgages took advantage of any american senior, or worse, that it was some way to take your home. it's just a loan designed for older homeowners, and, it's helped over a million americans. a reverse mortgage loan isn't some kind of trick to take your home. it's a loan, like any other. big difference is how you pay it back. find out how reverse mortgages really work with aag's free, no-obligation reverse mortgage guide. eliminate monthly mortgage payments, pay bills, medical costs, and more. call now and get your free info kit. other mortgages are paid each month, but with a reverse mortgage, you can pay whatever you can, when it works for you, or, you can wait, and pay it off in one lump sum when you leave your home. discover the option that's best for you. call today and find out more in aag's free, no-obligation reverse mortgage loan guide. access tax-free cash and stay in the home you love. you've probably been investing in your home for years... making monthly mortgage payments... doing the right thing... and it's become your family's heart and soul... well, that investment can give you tax-free cash just when you need it. learn how homeowners are strategically using a reverse mortgage loan to cover expenses, pay for healthcare, preserve your portfolio, and so much more. look, reverse mortgages aren't for everyone but i think i've been 'round long enough to know what's what. i'm proud to be part of aag, i trust 'em, i think you can too. trust aag for the best reverse mortgage solutions. call now so you can... retire better tonight i'll be eating a calzone from doughballs in aurora. (doorbell) rock on. tonight i'll be eating lobster thermidor au gratin. really? sh-yeah, and monkeys might fly out of my butt. make it two calzones! how will you measure the year of covid-19? popular culture, mass media can help us process the news that is right in front of our eyes. the united states is about to surpass the 500 0rks 00 mark. half a million deaths from covid. that's going to happen in just the next day or two. it is a new and devastating milestone. so we turned to popular culture. we were reminded of a song from "rent." ♪ 525,600 minutes ♪ 525,000 moments so dear ♪ 520,600 minutes. ♪ how do you measure, measure a year? >> a musical from the pain of a different virus, the words now apply here. one death per minute. that will be one way to measure the first year of the pandemic in the united states. when the numbers are added up in march, we will be probably right around that figure, 525,600 deaths from covid. now, this grim tally is paired with increasingly hopeful news about the future. this continues to be a split screen pandemic. we are learning about more and more vaccinations, twdwindling infection rates. talk about herd immunity. this is all good news we are hearing as the death toll rises. these headlines were put up on screen. there is a lot of this stuff still going on. stories about flukes, vaccine one offs, people that get sick or die after getting the va vaccine. this information out of context is scaring folks. let's talk to the former baltimore health commissioner and cnn analyst. we'll put it up again, but this is an issue i'm continuing to see. a new york post headline talked about a local news anchor who died after getting the vaccine. we have all the reason in the world to believe these are very sad coincidences. and, yet, when you put it in the headline it can mislead people. i agree with you, brian. i think the media should do more when it talks about the extraordinary benefit of the vaccine. we are talking about numbers like 95% effective. but then these vaccines are also almost 100% at preventing severe disease, enough to cause hospitalization or death and ultimately that's the end point that we care about because i think that we have a chance with these vaccines of turning covid-19 from the deadly disease it currently is into something like a bad cold or the that's how well it can protect them that will give us back our lives and our economy and our kids getting back to school. i think the media has a major role here. what will prevent us from reaching herd immunity ultimately is not supply. supply it an issue right now, but ultimately the problem is vaccine hesitancy. >> let's show the way to frame these stories when there are flukes, when there are heartbreaking coincidences that occur. that can be framed in the headline saying there's no sign of a link. the shots are safe. that would be a much more appropriate way to do this. dr. wen, i'm short on time but thank you very much for being here. >> thank you. >> again, hope and heartbreak, pain and progress hand-in-hand, side-by-side. that is the story every day now. a look at this morning's "new york times" front page trying to depict every american death from covid. one dot for each person. the concentration of dots showing thousands of deaths a day this winter. one of the lives lost this week was a member of the extended cnn family, gary was 69. he would have celebrated his 50th wedding anniversary with patricia this year. gary and patricia's daughter is a senior entertainment writer, a friend to all of us here at "reliable sources" an amazing colleague of ours, and we want to send our condolences to lisa and her mom. we'll be right back. because i work with a lot... of dust and dirt. just washing... the dirt and the grime off... and just bringing you... back...to you. you see the glow? 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