the country. dean has been in this job since 2014 having earlier served as managing editor and washington. chief of the times. he also edited the los angeles times, and won a pulitzer prize for his reporting for the "chicago tribune" and started his newspaper career way back when as a young journalist at the time stick you in new orleans. martin baron, marty to most of his friends come join the "washington post" in 2013 after 11 years editing the "boston globe." both papers under his leadership harvested 12 pulitzer prizes. baron also in order times helped edit the los angeles times, the "new york times" and the miami herald. allow me to start our discussion tonight with a simple proposition, that in a democracy such as ours, if freedom of the press is jeopardized, then democracy itself is jeopardized. since one is intimately linked to the other. during the presidential campaign of 2016, candidate donald trump routinely criticized the press or the media, humiliating a number of reporters, bullying others, challenging the very concept of freedom of the press as written into the first amendment of the u.s. constitution. many said this was all campaign talk. if you want this would inevitably change. that is the way it has always been. well, he whined and it has not changed. indeed, it is gotten much worse. even on occasion frightening pic and i use the word deliberately. the word of the president is much more consequential than the word of a candidate. i know that of the president have had their quarrels with the media, but donald trump crossed a bright red line. when you accuse reporters of being the enemies of the american people, forgetting that phrase was a favorite of many 20th century dictators. and trump has gone further, warning that it might change libel laws. that reporters might have revealed their sources on sensitive national security stories, or risk imprisonment. even warning network such as nbc that their license to broadcast may be revoked if their new stories displease the white house. stories called fake news. what is president trump seeking to accomplish in this one work with the media? and what should the press response really be? so, dean, marty, welcome. good to have you both with us. how does one cover a president trump in a wild era of expanding digital horizons? how do you do that without, at the same time perhaps undercutting your own traditional standards of mainstream journalism? dean, starters, please. >> first off, he will dodge your standards of journalism. there are bedrock standards which are the obvious ones, truth, fairness, that good journalist are aggressive, skeptical. i think you hold onto those things, and obviously you have to cover him as we would in the president by the at a remarkable speed. and with him get to dodge the fact that yes, all the things you opened up work too. i think you saw to undefined the press, -- undermine the press. i think an attempt to appeal to his base by making the press look like it's not fair and by making, by turning the press sorted into a punching bag. i think over the long haul if you tell the truth, if you're accurate, if you are aggressive and fair and hold onto your principles, i think in the end that's the only way you can cover him. >> marty, i'm sure you agree with all that. the question i'm getting at, trying to get at is this president has a way, a very skillful way, of dominating the environment. he's all over the place and he does that with his tweets picky does that with his personality, his style. how do you keep up with that kind of domination of the environment? do you have enough reporters? do you have to stick to your basic rules asking was saying before and still be able to cover him? >> well, i think so. i agree with the dean. we have new ways of publishing. we publish at a greater speed. we publish not just with four hours a day seven days a week but now we have to publish immediately. people expect to get the news immediately, typically on your cell phone, the instant that happens. at all poses challenges to us. but we still have our values we still have our mission. that remains the same, and every day when i walked into our newsroom we have the principles of the "washington post" on the wall facing the. the very first principle which has been around there for more than eight decades, that is to tell the truth is known new ase truth may be ascertained. there's a sense of striving there because the truth may be elusive, can be elusive, but it says that there is such a thing as the truth. it's not just a matter of personal opinion. there is the truth and our job is to come in every day, do our job, do our work and try to determine the truth. that is exactly what we do. it's nothing fancy. it's our work the same work we've been doing for decades. >> use the word truth. this is a president who has been violating the truth almost on a daily basis. we use the word lie now routinely describe many of the things that a president of the united states is saying. now, you have your standards, and in my judgment they are the right standards, but how do you maintain them when the man you are covering isn't dealing with the truth on many occasions? >> we actually, , i actually che to use the word lie on the front page of the "new york times" which was a controversial decision in our newsroom and actually think that a lot of thoughtful editors would disagree with it, but we don't do it all the time. we did it at one time. i think the way you cover him is, if he says acts and if it's on you report out why. i think one thing marty says is true. i think you report aggressively and i think you sort of layout the facts. i think that's what we've been doing since i started as a reporter in 1977. i don't think it's different. i think it's faster. i think it's even more aggressive. we have done things, newspapers, have done things like set up old truth squad operations. we no longer wait the way we did when i started for two or three days to evaluate whether a politician is telling the truth. we try to do it immediately. we set up systems to do it immediately. on the other hand, i do say it's sometimes easier to check things today. the internet may have perils but also has great gifts. >> it's hard to check ally that quickly, isn't? >> if the president says that he cut a program by half a billion dollars, i don't think -- >> that's easy. >> that's easy. that's actually 90% of the things i think you're talking about. that's sort of easy. you just challenging and you report them out and you lay it out. >> marty, when the president dismisses some of your best reporting as fake news, and when, according to many polls, from 30-40% of the american people are buying into that description, how do you do with that? how do you fight back? >> we do our job. i'm sorry, i realize you are looking for something more but i don't think there's a lot more to it. look, the president on his first day in office he went to the cia headquarters and he said, i have a war with the press. the round is, we don't have a war with them. we are not at war. we are at work we're doing our job every day the same way with always done it. look, you talk about fact checking. we have a fact checker at the "washington post" for well come for a long time, well before the trump administration. in fact, we doubled the size. we added an extra person. we have two people doing it and they've been doing fact check for a long time. they happen to be a little busier these days and it were in the past i have to say, but they are doing the same sort of work every single day. the very fact the president is attacking us doesn't change things. we can't just be reacted to that. we have to go out, gather the facts, provide the context, do it in an honorable and honest way, and that's what we endeavor to do every single day. >> what is indifferent about covering trump? >> -- what is then different -- it's a much more hostile environment, no question about that. he was attacking as during the campaign regularly, even withdrew press credentials from the "washington post" during the primary and then for a time during the general election as well. he condemned us. he condemned us. he sought to delegitimize us, even dehumanizes calling us this, and garbage, the lowest form of humanity. when that wasn't enough he called his the lowest form of life itself. so he sought to dehumanize us, and so that's to prepare keys also threatened us in a way it's are talking about the possibility of litigation against us, suggesting as has been reported by us in the "new york times" in his conversation with a former fbi director, the prospect of wanting to send some reporters to jail for leaks, particularly of classified information leaks. this is what's different. it's a more threatening and more hostile environment. >> if i can -- i agree with marty. if i can add. it's also a significant shift in the culture of washington. there's always been potential relationship between, i i mean, it's a myth, i was the washington bureau chief of the "new york times" for five years and i never met barack obama the entire time i was the washington bureau chief. there was a notion of papers i could post at the "new york times" had a cozy relationship. i don't want to the cozy relationship with any president. i don't go to the christmas parties. i don't go to the white house correspondents' dinner. .. i want to tell you a story. back in 1947 when jackie robinson broke the baseball barrier on color he still faced a great deal of prejudice and got into a lot of fights. his boss pulled him aside one day and said jackie, don't punch back just beat them on the field. turn that into journalism now. how do you adjust to the almost daily taunts and jabs and insults of the president without punching back? you are making it seem as if this is the same in your principles are the same and you don't touch but everything is with the story. >> it can be. this is the thing, this is what i'm trying to do here. i don't think that is true. i think that we come to expect it. it happens every other day, maybe every day and it has become to some degree background music. is a pleasant background music but it is background music. if only to react this every sunday and get all worked up about it and spend our time making an issue out of it all the time we wouldn't be able to do our jobs. look, if that is what he wants to do that is what he wants to do. we know what we want to do. we want to do our jobs and that's what were going to continue to do. >> dean, you know and i know when everyone in this we know that people argue that the two of you, new york times and washington post are in a unseemly competition to topple this president, to topple this president, to pull another watergate. what i would like to view is how do you respond to that kind of criticism which is not widespread but there. >> i would say two things. first, marty and i are friends, in fact, we have a tremendous and our only competition is between us. it's not a competition to topple the presidency. i sincerely believe -- i do agree that "the washington post" and "the new york times" are at the forefront of the story right now. i cannot imagine what it would be like if it was only one of us because it would mean that the other newspaper would be under tremendous pressure. i will say that one of the most under discussed in undervalued qualities in journalism that drives much more journalism than anyone realizes is competition. i hate it when i get beat. he hates it when he gets beat and the thought that we could collude to do anything is utterly ridiculous. except we could collude to fight for our values and to talk about the first amendment. the thought that we would be anything other than family and admiring but vicious -- he is vicious. [laughter] >> competitors. >> it is better that both of us are in there but i've invited him to see the territory. we can test it and see how it goes without -- >> i would like to get your judgment on both of you when the president keeps attacking the press what is his ultimate aim? what is he seeking to accomplish? you said he was playing space, fine, is that all he is trying to accomplish? >> i will fall short of psychoanalyzing him but if you looked at donald trump's pattern through the campaign and as president, first off, he clearly goes after his critics. i think he goes after, in particular, critics and people who of independent standing which the press certainly does. early in his presidency and arguably the most independent and protected entities in society are the judiciary and the press. first off, i think all presidents are frustrated by the power of the press and by the fact they can't tell us what to do and by the fact that we push back hard but i think for a guy who grew up in a world of business i think it makes them nuts. he is also a guy who as a new yorker grew up manipulating the press. i think page six was his playground. he famously announced his divorce on page six before he told his wife. suddenly he arrived in washington at the pinnacle of it all and here are these jerks, the press, who push and push and do our jobs. >> you don't see a larger political purpose? >> i mean there is the obvious one which is he plays to a base that generally may not believe the press anyway. i think some of it is personal frustration. his mo in new york was to manipulate the press and he got his way with press, mainly the tablets. >> is it possible -- part of it is a guy who suddenly finds himself confronting a very different press that he confronted when he lived in the world of tabloid journalism in new york. >> is a possible that by attacking the press by creating this sense of big news by g delegitimizing the american people and what they do for living that he may succeed and that at the end of the day his vision may try a? do you think this is possible? whewhat would that happen? what is the price of letting this happen? >> it has a corrosive effect, no doubt about it. he is saying something that appeals to the large segment of the american population. approval ratings were quite low and continue to go down over decades. that is true about most institutions, major institutions in american society. we have the not great distinction of being the head of congress on that front but, you know, the actual polls have shown a sharp decline, significant decline in the last year and approval of the president had presidency as well. to the point that our standing in the president standings are intersecting. if you look at the polls -- if you look at the polls recently we've seen more of an uptick in the standing of the press among the american public. people see us doing our work and my view is we have to look at the long run. will the reporting be validated over the long run? if you go back to watergate and i'm not making an analogy here but we had a president at that time was sharply critical of the press, [inaudible] the designated attack dog embraced that role and the approval ratings for the press were very low. the american segment saw that as an enterprise and that turns out that reporting was validated. the approval rating for the press after nixon's resignation went sharply up to the highest point we've seen. this is not always so high. maybe the mid-fifties is high is we will ever get but i take the long view of this. reporting needs to be solid, ultimately i am confident that the reporting will be validated over time and i take the long view of our standing among the american public. >> is trust be lost to whatever degree how does one reconstitute trust? how do you gain back the confidence of the american people that what you spend an awful lot of time and money doing is valuable and important. how do you sell that again? >> i may be naïve but i actually think that when the press does its job and does its job which is to be an aggressive questioning watchdog of government that even if it drops, it will come back. if the press does its job, vietnam, watergate, press didn't do its job as well build up to the iraq war and when the press does its job and is aggressive, even if it temporarily loses trust, if it holds on to its values -- i think history is filled with examples of where it comes back. i think as long as you get it right, as long as you stand up to power and as long as you aggressively question and as long as you aggressively question a lot. i don't thank you lose. i think history is behind us on that. >> you don't feel neither one of you that the combination of presidential taunts perhaps actual action against you and atmosphere that gets clouded with doubt and suspicion. that is a tough -- >> action it makes me nervous. we haven't gotten to the realm of action. if this white house, for instance, remember the last white house was not so press to the press. if they chose to be more aggressive that would be bad that would be something we would have to pay to. if this president -- i'm not sure i buy the licensing issue but if this president chooses to go after reporters and jeff sessions has said the attorney general has said that he is open leak investigation that makes me more nervous than marty and i'm with him. the terms and traits have become background music. at a certain point we would look at them and debate about how to respond and he did 12 days ago at us and we don't even respond anymore. >> let me give you a little bit of history before i asked my next question. when i was covering lyndon johnson during the vietnam war there were a couple of occasions when he would call me on the phone, yell and curse and accuse me of all kinds of horrors and when those calls and did i was a shaken leaf. it was to. then during the nixon ministration i found myself on an enemies list. my office was broken into twice. phone was tapped. i worry that do any of your reporters and has anyone checked back to you with anything resembling that kind of activity against the press? >> shouting? >> shouting, yes. you don't need an enemies list to -- not aware of anything, and. >> so even on the national security story -- >> but if they were occurring and not supposing that it happens because i don't have evidence but we wouldn't know about that. >> let me take a minute to remind our radio, internet, listeners and watchers that this is the martin cal report and i'm talking to the nation's top editors, washington post and new york times. what is the single biggest challenge to your newspaper today? >> boy, the single biggest challenge? i think we have gotten past -- if you ask me that three years ago i might have said the financial but i don't feel there's always a challenge but i don't feel threatened by that anymore. i really don't. the single biggest challenge? there are a lot of them. i guess the sink is the single biggest challenge, to my mind is not just "the new york times" but it is whether local news which i think is in the middle of a crisis, whether the country can survive what i think will happen in the next four or five years which is many local newspapers are going to go out of business. one challenge for me is i believe i have an obligation to make up for some of that. i even have an obligation, i think, to do to help those institutions survive but if you ask me what is the biggest challenge facing journalism, i can answer that way, it's the inevitable decline and death of the great local news organizations. >> party, your sense, please. >> my sense is that people have a very difficult time these days distinguishing what is true and what is not true. they are drawn to sources of information that affirm their pre-existing point of view, not just in terms of opinion but they will accept so-called information and so-called news that is coming from media outlets that deliberately spread false information and crackpot conspiracy theories. people are open to those because somehow it conforms to their view of the world. that is concerning because now we have a society that used to be -- we used to disagree and we should disagree on policies and what the analysis of events are in the interpretation is and what the prescription for solving our problems are but we would agree on the baseline set of facts. we could agree on what happened yesterday. you could disagree about what to do about it but now we can't agree on what happened yesterday. i think that is not just the challenge for the press but a challenge for democracy because how do you have a healthy democracy is a well-functioning civil society if we cannot even agree on a baseline set of fac facts. >> i almost feel like i have to go back to the first question i asked you. if you are dealing with a president who attempts to build up the concept of fake news that only worsens your problem and how does a newspaper today you run the two biggest best newspapers in the country and that is a huge problem, totally agree with you how do you deal with it? when you say what i want to do is i want aggressive reporting and honest and those are words and their words of great importance but the fact is -- >> there's a limit to what we can do. we don't have total power obviously. contrary to what people say about us. we do have to do our jobs the way that we see them and also i think we can be more transparent about how we go about our work. we should talk more about who we are and go about our work and this is why and we can tell people more about backgrounds for the people who write for us and produce video for us and do our graphics and all of that. i think people are entitled to know who we are and entitled to know how to reach us and we can show more of the documents that we depend on and doing our reporting and we can disclose more full transcripts or audio of interviews that we have conducted. we could be more open about that and that would help. i don't pretend that would entirely do the job but it won't hurt. >> i think it helps a lot. one of the shocks to me when i was did a focus group and to my four people didn't know what the lines were so if the story said the name melissa ruben and it said cabo they thought that meant she made a lot of phone calls. i think we need to tell people that she has been covering more urgent war in afghanistan, here's what she looks like, here's her background, if you do that and i think our previous era of distance from readers is not good for us i think we are learning how to open the doors. >> dean, you mentioned a moment ago that three years ago the financial issue might have been the major problem but it isn't today. to the best of my knowledge you have established the foundation in the newsroom to attract money to help you cover the news. how is that doing by the way and how much money have you collected? >> we just started that. and that's not why the i feel comfortable because over the last year and this is one thing i would point to the people who say that news organizations like ours are being attacked and discredited -- both of our organizations have seen dramatic rises in suscribers and i think people want to read strongly reported, well reported journalism and they are flocking to us. >> so, trump has been one for you. [laughter] >> that's accommodated answer. to finish the -- for my institution as parties is the revolution and economics of the great news organization like ours is that suddenly we are much more dependent on readers than ever before. we are more dependent on readers and advertisers and it's a remarkable interesting development. i also think it ensures that institutions that are high quality will survive. nobody is singling but more i am worse than when i was two years ago. >> do you make more money on advertisements then -- >> we now make more money on suscribers and printed online that we do in advertising. when i started in the business 80% -- it's not totally reversed but it's moving in that direction. by the way, to be frank, i would much more want to be dependent on my readers than on advertisers. i think that readers demand quality and demand all the things we're talking about. is a great development. >> marty, you have an owner with deep pockets, just basals. does that mean you have no financial problems at the post? >> no, we have a very good year for the very reasons that you mentioned and were seen a dramatic growth in suscribers. earlier this year we passed a million digital only suscribers in addition to the people who get digital access with their print newspaper subscription. that was double what we had at the beginning of the year and triple we had a year earlier. using tremendous growth and that has had a dramatic impact on our financial picture. for having quite a good year. josh's objective is for us to create a sustainable business model for "the washington post". we are not a charity. he doesn't treat us like a charity in a very glad he doesn't treat us like a charity because if people were to get tired of this charity we would be in deep trouble. what he wants to do is create a sustainable business model that allows for a very long time in decades. >> are you having a good year contract. >> last year was our very profitable year and were doing far better than we did last year. that is not to say that all the issues are resolved. we still have a lot of reasons to work on but the two of us are in better shape than major metropolitan newspapers around the country that does remain, a huge crisis in this press. >> i was joking for when i asked you whether trump was good for business but it occurs to me that you both thought about this the subscription rates are going up is that people want to know more about a president who dominates the news. >> oh, sure. >> that gives you an opportunity to provide insight into this new president. >> both of our institutions and both are ready to take advantage. not every news organization has seen the dramatic increases that the post in "the new york times" have seen. i don't think they were in a position and i think people come to us because they know we are covering them aggressively but the one thing i could say trump has done for me as a journalist is there was a period when newspapers lost a little bit of their confidence. our economics were more in turmoil and i'm talking about going for several years. our economics were more in turmoil. there were debates in newsrooms about not necessarily in the newsrooms but newspaper companies and all news organizations and what did readers want to how to be readers with a want which is a very good debate but debates like that always make you a little anxious. i think that what we learn is they want what we do and i feel more confident as an editor today that i have -- the confident guy anyway but i feel significant more confident today as an editor and for clear on what are you supposed to do that i did five years ago. >> i would add to that that in the thinking among the american public as wellin the american public took the press were granted for a very, very long time. that has changed. people don't take the press for granted anymore. they have a better understanding of the role of the press and american democracy and i think that has helped us. people recognize today that they need quality journalism and if they don't support quality journalism by paying a very little amount of money actually they don't support quality journalism they will not get quality journalism. >> but were talking about quality journalism from very to distinctive news organizations, "the new york times" and "the washington post". you mentioned to me, dean, the news organizations in the central part of america. perhaps you were saying yourself that some of these may have to go out of business. >> i think local news is in deep trouble. i think the financial model that the post in "the new york times" have managed their way through which is the dramatic decline of print advertising and i think a lot of these newspapers have cut their newsrooms to the point that it's hard for them to charge kind of money that are news organizations charge and i think there are entire sections in america that aren't covered. i grew up in a new york paper in new orleans that is a terrific newspaper. >> i'm sure the staff is a tiny fraction of what it was. my guess is there are places like mississippi and alabama that don't cover their congressional delegation because they don't have washington bureau or washington correspondence unless their members of congress are very powerful figures and become national figures and i think those news organizations are struggling. >> what is the consequence of that? >> the consequence of having an entire part of the country not covered by district by the way, there are other news organizations that will come in and take the place and in some cases but that is not happening at the most places. i think that is catastrophic. i think it means that there are school boards right now making decisions with nobody watching. it means that there are budgets that are getting past in places where the news organizations have their staffs are too small to spend days going through their budget. i already think we are in the middle of a crisis that people have that will be enough to. >> forty. >> i agree. look, something like more than half the states -- the press in the states have no one in washington covering their congressional delegation, nobody. and most states, perhaps the biggest paper in the state has maybe one or two people covering the state capital, the governor, both houses of the state legislator and all the government agencies, the politics and the policy and they are expected to do an investigative piece and it's not even possible to do. there are school boards going on covered, county, city councils going on covered a lot of things going on covered but get about the other powerful institutions who should be covered as well. overall it leads to a lack of accountability and i think degradation is basically about the local, regional and state level. that's usually concerning because who is going to step in to do that kind of work. >> it also means that when i was a reporter for "the new york times" spending most of my time in washington there was a stretch near the metro where they were like eight or nine newspaper boxes for the regional newspapers and if you got beat on the story partly because they used wires and partly because a lot of them were competing they would walk as the post force but the sun in the philadelphia inquirer was like a kick in the stomach so by the time you got into and i got back to the washington bureau i was practically crawling. that is gone. regional news organizations are not factors in this way they were. >> let me talk to you for a second about social media and how journalism are dealing with social media which could be a blessing that occurs but i'm not sure that. dean, you recently announced some guidelines on the [inaudible] of social media. why the concern? >> first thing i should say about all of this, social media and the digital landscape it is all actually great. we spent a lot of time as journalists and ringing and debating in the course it's all careless but the big news organizations like mine have more readers because more people can access. the reason we change the model and media social policy is i thought it was too easy desperate. >> what did you change it to? >> we always made it a policy that essentially journalist should not see anything on other platforms and social media that they wouldn't see in the pages of new york times or various problems. to be frank, we weren't aggressive enough in making this up front and center policy so we announced the front and center policy in the essence is don't say anything on twitter or facebook or anything else that you wouldn't say in "the new york times" because, i think, there's an entire generation of journalist that we have encouraged them to have large, we've encouraged them to promote their stories, we've encouraged them to find audiences for their stories and we want them to do that but i was worried that there may be instances where people went too far in expressing their opinions. we are in a time when the press is being pushed to be provocative, poked by his enemies district by the way, even television news doesn't. we are in a climate where everyone wants everybody to say a strong stuff a strong opinion and it's really tempting and what i wanted to do was make clear that i don't want the temptation to work or any of our people into saying things that desperate. enough, but i remember when abe rosenthal was editor of "the new york times" he would say that if the times reporter doesn't want to appear on cbs they can appear on cbs and leave the times. he wouldn't allow it at all. now you want it to get out and it was a publicity thing for you but -- >> is her transparency, to. >> but on cable television when a reporter for the host and i have seen many of them and when you appear on fox or on msnbc the environment itself screams a political point of view. your reporter is asked to discuss the story that will be on tomorrow's post. i'm not saying that the reporter goes beyond that. i'm saying that the environment suggests any logical doing that that reporter is hooked in with the left or otherwise. how do you manage that? can you have it both ways? do you want the publicity without going along with the cost? >> i'm not sure i entirely accept your premise there. i think our reporters can behave in a very professional manner and that -- you are presupposing that just because they are there they are assumed to have a super political point of view. >> you see that at all? >> i do not believe that is the case. you have to point me to some specifics to look at. look, we want our reporters to be out there. the people on our staff and they are authorities in their fields. they spent a lot of time and have experience and expertise. we want them to share that we want them to be viewed as authorities, the authorities that they are. these days it is helpful if they make proper use of social media and its helpful if they are on television and the radio and that is where our viewers are so we would like to reach them and have them think about us, "the washington post". i don't think they necessarily engage in risky behavior simply because they are appearing on the air. >> on the contrary i specifically said i am not all criticizing the -- >> i'm not sure they are perceived as such. >> okay, let's leave that desperate. >> can i say one thing? it's not just publicity. it will cause and call attention to the news organizations but i'm in this business to have in fact. i want to do -- if i do an investigative story like harvey weinstein reporting that we just did i wanted to have impact and i wanted to be read and i wanted to be discussed and i wanted to have impact on the world so yeah, by the way, i want people to meet reporters who did it. i think people benefited from meeting [inaudible] and scene is a normal, nice guy. [laughter] >> just to be clear, i feel the same way about the da i story. let's be serious for a minute. >> do we have to? >> what i would like to say is that journalists around the world tend to look toward the united states as a beacon with the expression of a free press and its broadest sense. they look to us for that. i am wondering if you think that president trumps attacks on the press have affected the way other governments deal with their press. dean? >> i want to say one -- it is easy for americans to get so upset about the way donald trump attacks us that we forget -- we still have amazing freedoms that other news organizations do not enjoy. we can still write -- neither of us control our editorial pages but tomorrow they can say whatever they want to say and i could publish a three-part series about anything and he can rail playing he can cover that and we have remarkable freedom in this country. >> there has been evidence reported that if the president of the united states is comfortable saying the list of despicable things that marty described that this president has said about journalist that will be empowering two countries that look for excuses to beat up there journalist and by the way, to beat us up to. it's hard for me as we keep making the case to the chinese government that they should make our website more available which they shut down after we did an investigative piece. >> one of your reporters was here with us and i'm happy was captive in iran for 544 days and we are so happy that he is now a free man and a free journalist once again. how do you editors protect reporters who are in similar, dangerous, troubling environments? >> it's very difficult. we try to take every precaution possible and we try to know when our reporters are and we provide security counseling along the way but what happened to jason was horrible but and totally unexpected. it came out of the blue for us. that was not where we received the greatest risk at the time. you know, we were very concerned about reporters who were covering syria, reporters were in iraq, afghanistan and places like that. now journalist who may be operating in turkey because turkey has cracked down on the press including the foreign press and so, we get concerned about that. journalists were operating in mexico where journalists are assassinated, domestic journalists are assassinated on a regular basis. journalists in venezuela where journalists are imprisoned on regular basis. we are concerned about the security of our people who operate in those environments. we do have and we do have people who advise us, experts to advise us on security. we keep track of our journalist so that we know where they are. >> if one of them had been kidnapped and you had a ransom request of $5 million, would you pay it? >> these are the hypotheticals that we would never discuss how we would respond to that sort. i'm not going to discuss that. >> okay. one student from the university of oklahoma who was with us tonight asked me to ask you this question. it's wonderful question. she wanted to know whether we are all going through a temporary phase at our american democracy with president trumps and that when he leaves office, whatever that be, will all return to something that resembles a normal presidency and a normal america. what you think about that? >> i don't know. i would say a couple of things. i think that washington and the press and the government will be different in a post era. i think that there is no question and i don't think, let's say, donald trump is president for eight years. i don't think the next president comes in and all of the changes that have been made, all of the debates that have been had and by the way, i would add those debates those are a lot of the reasons he's been elected. there are pierce debates about the role of the media and the elites and the role of the coast and those are still gone. if we pretend that donald trump is not a product of those debates we will miss the opportunity to understand the discussion that was going on in the country before hand. he is a byproduct of what everyone thanks of him and i won't judge him, that's not my job. he is a byproduct of some pierce debates in economic upheavals in america that are not going to go away. >> let me ask each of you a final question. i will give you 30 seconds to answer. detailed answer. [laughter] seriously, what advice would you give to young journalist in the audience here about students who want to go into journalism give them that negativity whatever going on today. what would you tell them, what advice? marty start. >> short and. go into journalism. it's a great profession and it will have a future. i'm an optimist actually, notwithstanding the abnormal challenges we face. one person can make an enormous difference. one person and if you want to be the person to make an enormous difference it's a great field to go into. >> dean. >> this is the greatest time to be a journalist. i grew up in a world where there was one platform, print. i called max franklin one day and said my god, i just ordered a video. there is no question that the best news organization are like a billion times better than they ever were before and the opportunities great. >> thank you both very much. i'm going i am afraid that our time is up but in closing, forgive me but i'd like to go back to an earlier point of the relationship of the free press to political authority and i would like to say that in my career as a journalist i covered the soviet union for a lot of my time it was a country at that time governed by communist and they had little taste and understanding of a personal freedom, much less press freedom and everything was determined by the [inaudible], the russian word for the guy. everything from the kremlin who thought he knew more than anything else and as a result everyone from doctors to journalists had to stand up and salute, never rocked the vote, never be critical of him or have policies. i did not like that arbitrary style of governance then or any version of it. i don't like it now. what i have learned over the years is that only a free press can truly protect us from authoritarian government, only a free press can ensure a continuation of a vibrant democracy. the two are inseparable. if a political leader, for whatever reason, science it to his advantage to attack the prepress, too humiliated, to disparage it, he is really attacking democracy at its core and that has no place in this country. that is my view. let me now think our audience here at the national press club and all of the world and especially, i want to thank our two editors, marty baron of "the washington post", dean of "the new york times" taking the time to be with us for sharing their thoughts, ideas, experience with us and for giving us hope that their leadership will inspire a new generation of reporters to go out there and get the news without fear or favor. that is it for now. i'm marty help and his people used to say, good night and good luck. [applause] >> thank you very much. we now have an opportunity for me to keep quiet and for you to ask questions. we have two cameras, one there and one there and please, if you have a question go to the camera area and i will recognize you. it is right there and right here and i will start over here with one young lady. please, go ahead. give me your name, ask a question, don't make a speech for all be forced to cut you off and i don't want to do that. >> i will resist the temptation. thank you for your trip reporting. especially on both the dea story and the harvey weinstein story, especially the women, frankly. you both talked about data and having more data about your readers and by the way my name is joan michelson with green connections and there is a balance here. we have to tell what we need to know which is not always what they want to know and sometimes they are in conflict. how do you decide what to cover -- how much of the readers opinion and desires take into account so that you don't end up not covering things you need to cover and maybe covering too much, in my opinions special. how do you decide -- >> thank you. i would say in the old days of newspapers we knew nothing about readers. i think we gave readers what we thought they wanted and i don't think that was any healthier. i think, in fact, my guess is peters had to buy your newspap newspaper, you didn't know what the weather would be in the morning didn't bite your newspaper. i think that knowing what readers want as long as you balance it is better and i think sometimes people misunderstand the use of data. they think data is we wake up in the morning and we say oh my god, the readers love this and they didn't love that so let's change it. 70% of the way we use data is oh my god, people seem to people in asia want to read a story that is at their time in asia or people tend to want to read their longer stories in the evening. if they want to wait longer stories and if i have a story that a reporter has worked on for six months and it's a long story i will certainly put it up in the evening. i like knowing what readers want. it just so happens unfortunately that the readers of "the new york times" want what we have been given them traditionally and i don't think people want the kardashians on "the new york times". i don't think we would know how to do that if we wanted. >> i don't even know who they are -- >> true. i want to know and i also think it's healthy for me to know that and i don't think will do anything to chase clicks but i want to understand my audience and i want to understand when they read in the sport for me to know -- in the print era we had the suspicion that people didn't read past the [inaudible] and nowadays if you know people don't read a story of a certain length on a certain day, on it when they will read it. i want to be read. >> thank you very much. yes please. >> carl sullivan and i'd like to raise a question or concern that the largest corporate media to be trusted that hasn't been co-opted by the deep state or even the deep church for the deep temple i would point to in the 50s operation mockingbird created by the cia, spent money in the top levels of journalism as keep covered up aspects of the kennedy assassination which 50 years later we're still waiting. >> you're not asking a question. >> have any of you heard of operation mockingbird or you refuse the notion of the mainstream media is guided by the deep state? >> i will refute the notion that the mainstream media is guided by the deep state. [applause] >> i don't even know where to begin. i really don't. look, the term deep state -- you're talking about people who work in government. look, we are doing our job the way that we always have. the idea that there is some hidden agenda here is crazy. the few states we talked about before, the bulk of our revenues are growing and the revelers are coming from subscribers. the people that we have to satisfy day in and day out are our suscribers. you what they want for us? for the most part, they want the kind of journalism that has traditionally been done and that is they want investigative reporting and they want honest and honorable journalism. they want narratives because they want all of that. they're willing to pay for it and you know it guides us? our suscribers guidance. >> yes, please. >> my name is casey decker, senior at gw. you both have sections of the pics of the upshot where people who are not communist but staff writers provide their own insight and my question is to what extent do you worry that those kind of final analysis create a slippery slope from objective reporting to our right opinion especially in a time where people are having a hard time. now what is fact. >> thank you. >> that's a good question. >> we work really hard and the analysis pieces have become much more important not only upshot but traditional, political analysis is more important today than it was before and it is harder to do because the traditional daily news story has analysis. analysis pieces were born in newspapers in an era when the new story was just a fact and you needed a story that when the president does this he is reaching for whatever symbol of foreign-policy or whatever. i think we are careful about them and we slip sometimes. i think they are important and probably more important than they ever were because they illustrate the expertise of a newsroom and i think we have to do them. we have to be careful. >> no question about it it's a good question. but we try to do is -- i don't think we should be stenographers what we want to do is not just report what people say but we want to report what people do and we want to explain why it is being done of who is responsible for those decisions and then you get into the territory of analysis. one thing he would do is label and we label analysis and we label something as opinion and we label something prospective or something like that and that appears on all of the digital platforms everywhere we are, no matter where we are on snapchat or on your mobile device or on apple news and we want to make sure the label follows us wherever he goes. >> yes, please. >> my name is jim, my question is for the james o'keefe video and comment on and explain whether you believe his work if investigative journalism or not. >> do people know -- i think his work is not investigative. >> please explain. >> james o'keefe is a guy who happens to be conservative who goes out and tries to trick journalists into saying inappropriate things and then he put them on his website. a journalist has to have, at his heart or her heart, a desire to make society better. all james o'keefe is trying to do is hurt institutions and get some clicks. he just did a video that and i use the word despicable because he managed to track a very young geographer, a very young employee of the video unit of "the new york times" into saying some outlandish things because he was a young guy who wanted to have a conversation with a woman. he said he was jim comey's godson and said he was the gatekeeper of video at "the new york times" and made all kind of outlandish claims. he was a kid. what james o'keefe did in jeopardizing their kids career was awful and i don't think it's journalism. it's destructive and dishonest and he lied about who he was and is employed lied about who they are. that's not journalism. journalism has got to have some value at its core, some desire to make it better informed. >> thank you. [applause] >> charlie clark with executive media group. the trump people would assume that the two newsrooms your president by liberal democrats who did not vote for trump and i am just wondering how confident are you that you have a good diversity of political leanings in your newsrooms? >> we don't ask. i'm not going to ask and i'm not going to ever ask. i interview pretty much every job candidate comes through the post and i have done the same for the boston globe and at the miami herald and a lot of instances the la times, as well. i never ask. i know people come from different backgrounds and the notion that people are only coming from the elite is a complete mess. our deputy and our deputy national editor grew up on a farm in western pennsylvania. her brother still runs the farm. we have one of the individuals who covers healthcare for us and she grew up in a family of 12 kids and was homeschooled and went to wheaton college which is an evangelical christian school. her roommate also works for us covering religion. so, we have a wide variety of people with backgrounds and that is what i look for. one thing that we endeavor to do is hire more that's into the post as well. we want to continue that. i think that's really important thing to do given the country has been at war for so long. that is clearly part of the american they had been in the military because there was a draft but there hasn't been a draft in a long time and so, i think now we need to make sure that we need to bring it back into our newsroom and we are endeavoring to do that. i think the time is endeavoring to do that. i think that is important to have a variety of backgrounds and whatever their political backgrounds are, i'm not going to ask them. they can go into the voting booth in their own privacy. >> thank you on that, marty. we have a little more than five minutes to go. please short of the questions of it in the answers. go ahead, please. that is hurting. [laughter] >> this will be brief. i'm eric melcher, board of governors at the press club here. i'm pleased to hear that the pendulum is leading toward readership revenue instead of advertisements. however why are there sometimes articles or sections in your paper from chinese media that don't always meet the same high standards of journalism that we hold here in the us. >> i think you're talking about us. we have an editorial section clearly labeled that is from china daily. that was a decision made by [inaudible] and it's clearly labeled as advertising. it's not labeled as news and you should consider it to be advertising. so. >> thank you, please. >> just will each, student at [inaudible] college. one of the things that is really getting into the nature of the new media age is compartmentalization. people are able to pick and choose the news they get so how do you sit through the noise and all the fake news and otherwise to get your message out to the readers. >> i will be short. i think marty address that earlier and part of it is doing and talking about who our reporters are and some of it is people think certain mythology about who runs america's paper. marty is from tampa, i'm from new orleans and i think that it is just we are honorable people who make mistakes sometimes but to have honorable goals and we hire veterans and we want newsrooms that look like america and we want you to know it. that is the main thing. >> thank you. >> yes, please. >> my name is gail rubin. my question is how do you view the presses coverage of candidate trump and how might we avoid reelecting him in the next go around. [laughter] based on all that free coverage. >> look, the choice of elect is up to the american people. our job is to get people and the citizens of the united states the information they need and deserve to know. i think and i'm proud of our coverage and dean is proud of his coverage at "the new york times". i think we investigated pretty much every aspect of donald trump's life and career. that said, there were networks that carried him live and all of those rallies without saying what was true or false for hours on end, largely because of the ratings. i don't happen to believe that was the right thing to do. where i think that we fail and i think the press in general field was what we didn't do before donald trump became a candidate. once you become a candidate you take them seriously as a candidate. the investigations i just talked about but before he was a candidate we should've done a better job about writing the level of grievances and the vast swaths of the united states and we should've brought that more to the fore. we needed to do a better job of listening to all of america and we are determined to be that going forward. >> yes, please. >> elliott haywood, freshman a gw and i'm currently working on a paper for print journalism and radio journalism can increasingly attract millennial's to their traditional sources of journalism. i was wondering what are the times in the post doing number one in terms of digital analytics and what is your data say in terms of how many of your new leaders are millennial and what are you doing other than increased presence on social media and online publications. what are you doing in the future for to stay relevant? >> there are areas of coverage that speak and i can't speak to new york times but i thank you can make yourself nuts, by the way, chasing every demographic group but there are areas of traditional news organizations that are read more by men than women and i think that's partly a reduction of the people [inaudible] i think diversifying your staff helps. we just started a gender vertical with the idea that we want and we have done the same and there are some subjects that were not president enough and we needed to get president in our pages and they are starting to get audiences and those are examples of audiences that we didn't necessarily have for. >> this is pretty close to "the new york times" and about a third of our audience is millennial's, by the way. we had something now called the [inaudible] which is mainly millennial women and quite successful. when jeff basals took us over and apart is one of the things we talked about was how to become more national and how do we appeal to the younger people because if we don't have younger people reading us we won't have our readership in the future and we have a blog for about internet culture where you have a blog about the environment where younger people who are interested in and we've done a lot of things. >> we go live now to capital to hear from senate leaders as they return from their party lunches. [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] the senator from

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