New album is called this old dog. Its funny to get labeled with Something Like that, because that is a very, you know, it holds some kind of weight, singer songwriter or even being called an artist, i still feel weird about that. Because in reality to me its just like i was 18, making songs in my garage and you know, turns out after a bit of time some people listened to them and its cool. Rose bob schieffer, Hari Sreenivasan, and mac demarco when we continue. Funding for charlie rose is provided by the following bank of america, life better connected. And by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and Information Services worldwide. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Bob schieffer has been at cbs news since 1969. Hes covered all the major beats in washington including the pentagon, white house, congress and state department. For 24 years he was the anchor of face the nation, he retired in 2015. Hes won 8 emmys and been named a Living Legend by the library of congress. His heatest book called overload finding the truth in todays deluge of news. I spoke with him last week at the 92nd street y here in new york and here is that conversation. applause i tell you, its worth aming up here just to get introduced by charlie. All right, first thing you notice he dnt have his boots on but he has his push el socks on, because that is the colors of ptu. Every day he gets up and pulls on purple socks and these are tonights version, so there you go. You know why . Rose why. I will tell you why. I didnt plan it this way but when tcu want to the rose bowl five or six years ago and we hadnt been to the rose ball since 1937, so it was a really big deal. So i got up at this pep rally and i was just trying to think of something to say that nobody else had said. And i said if you guys win i will wear purple socks for the rest of my life. I had no idea they were going to win. They won. laughter . Rose and its probably worth it for you. So far. Rose whats fascinating is the first story is how you came to write this, and the conversation you had. And well meet your coauthor but the conversation you had with someone who basically said was happening in journalism is an issue of National Security. Yes. John hamry who is the head of csis in washington which is the center for strategic and international study, its i think the leading think tank in washington but there is some other really good ones. But dr. Hamry who was deputy secretary of defense in the Clinton Administration and is a true defense intellectual, he is respected by people on both sides and all sides of Foreign Policy issues. We were having coffee with Andrew Schwartz who was with me on this book, he is the chief of communications at csis and we were just talking about journalism and where it is today. And with all of this fake news, with all of the questions about what can you believe and all of that, dr. Hamry said this is a National Security issue. And so andrew and i started this series of podcasts where we just started calling up people in all parts of journalism, the editor of the Washington Post, reporters for politico, we did 44 podcasts starting in the summer of 2016ment and we gt about, i would say into about ten of them and we thought you know, this might make might make the usual washington report that think tanks put out. And then the more we thought about it, i said you know, if im going to do Something Like that, i want people to read it i dont think there is any other reason to write a report or a book. So we decided to make a book out of it and that is how this book came about. It was a fascinating process and project because what the book is about is we are in the midst of a Communications Technology revolution that is having as profound affect on our culture and the people of our time as the invention of the pret Printing Press had on the people of that day, but the difference is, while the presents principle improves literacy, it also was followed by 30 years of religious wars and it was literally 30 years, three decades before equilibrium was reached in yawrp. Were at the very binning of beginning of this communications revolution, it is having a profound affect on all of our institutions but especially on the way we get our news and also on our politics, and were right in the middle of it right now. Rose i want to talk about it, i assume the title overload is how much new there is out there and how to respond to it. Yes. Rose but there is also as you quote the president of npr, the scarsest resource in journalism now is attention span. We used to live in a world governed by the laws of physics, time and space, time on the air, space in the newspaper. They were our restrains, the reality right now is how long can you keep your audience, your followers consuming the journalism you create. Thats right. And this is come about for several reasons. Number one the decline of newspapers. We all know because of the coming of the weapon which has drained away the advertising which used to be the lifeblood of our newspapers, newspapers as we have known them are going away. We have lost 126 newspapers over the last 12 years, here is an interesting statistic. In 2000 2004 one reporter in eight lived in washington, new york ors will ang less. Now that number is down to one reporter in five lives in one of those three cities. So when you get out into the midwest and across the rust belt, its not a question of whether people are getting biased news, theyre getting no news from reliable sources. Most of their news is now coming from facebook and social media. Rose 63 of the people today. 63 now get at least some of their news from facebook. Which is fine. Its a great way to have communication with your neighbors and whats going on in the neighborhood and your relatives. But things that appear on facebook have not gone through the editing process that you would be used to seeing on the front page of your local newspaper in days gone by. And in the mainstream media. For example, i mean, those, at cbs or the New York Times or the Washington Post or its a good newspapers that are left, you can generally assume that we dont broadcast or publish something, charlie, unless weve gone to some trouble to find out if its true. That is not the standard that is being followed throughout social media. Rose yes, so many people can be their own publishers is what happened, the personification of the medium. What happened yesterday, after this horrendous event happened in las vegas, social media was filled with all kinds of stories. The first one was that the shooter was an antitrump liberal who liked rachel mad ou maddow. Im serious, that is what it was. And they also said that he had converted to islam. And was associated with isis and alqaeda. All of those things, all of those topics are absolutely false and totally without foundation. But i actually called cbs yesterday, something kicked up on my phone that said he had converted to islam. And i called one of the producers at charlies broadcast and i said is that right. No, its totally wrong. Rose no evidence. And thats what happened now. So who can blame people when they say who can i believe, who can i trust. There is so much out there were being bombarded for all sides 24 7 by this stuff. And it is just almost impossible to separate the wheat from the chaff. Rose so everybody in this audience is saying how do we do it, how do we figure out what is true and was real. Well, i think the first thing we have to do, joe ny, National Security expert up at harvard and has been in various administrations said well never defeat this by just simply answering every lie. What you have to do is you have to inoculate people before hand. Make them aware of was going on and what they might expect. And think thats the best way to do it. But there are going to have to be some major reforms. Facebook and google for a time were saying look, were not a media company. We are a technology company. And we cant be responsible for what shows up on our website. Now this is this is a company that 62 of the American People or many of them depending on it as their only source of news and many for some news. You have to take responsibility for that. And they are beginning to do that. They are beginning to do that and that is the most hopeful sign that has happened so far. But in the beginning, this thing just got away from everybody before we really realized the significants. Rose so what would be the pushback. Is the pushback that people become alarmed in terms of what they hear and see and not knowing what is true, if after the Printing Press was invented there was a pushback, is the pushback were experiencing now the sense of credibility of news . Yes. And lets make no mistake. The russians are playing a role in this. There is no question that they are. At csis Heather Connelly one of the scholars there has done a study called the kremlin playbook. Shes gone through and looked across Central Europe at the behavior of the russians there. The russians dont drive their tanks across borders any more. They found out its much cheaper to use cyberand to adopt a kind of soft power methods. And basically what theyre doing in these countries is theyre bribing local officials. Theyre making sweetheart deals with local businessmen in these countries, making loans to them. Things of that nature. And doing everything they can to destabilize the press. And to raise questions about the credibility of the press in these countries. And theyve had remarkable success with that. And if any of that sounds familiar, its what has been going on in this country over the last year or so. Theres no question in all of our intelligence people agree with that assessment. The only person without questions it is the president. Rose the president and steve bannon. Yeah rdz the questions of newspapers just for a moment, you came from the Fort Worth Star telegram great newspaper in texas and forth wort. The Washington Post has turns things around. Yes. Rose jeff bezos bought the Washington Post and helped them understand how to use the electronic medium. They have. And the post, i must say, is leading the way. Because were focused on the bad news of what is happening with this Technology Revolution but theres some very good news there. And the Washington Post with marty barron as the editor has found a way for newspapers to survive. And i think if newspapers do survive this, i think jeff bezos is going to deserve most of the credit. Rose you said he is singly handedly is saving the newspapers. He may have single handedly have done it. What they have done, they are no long a newspaper company, the New York Times is doing the same thing now. These companies are no longer Just Companies that publish a newspaper. They have turned themselves into Media Companies and they are producing a product that goes out on a variety of platforms. Theyre digital platform, they put out newsletters every day. They are finding just more and more ways to reach their viewers. The Washington Post now has a Video Division where they put out videos to supplement their news coverage. But in the old days both the times and the post, you know, everyone rve everybody wondered in at about 10 or 11 00 in the morning. They want and covered their beats, talked to their sources. Then everybody got back to the office about 5 30 and wrote for a 7 00 deadline and then everybody want home and they came back the next day and did the same thing. Now all of these companies have completely changed their schedules. And heres another thing. In those days which i called gatekeeper era of journalism where you had three television stations in every town and everybody had a pretty good newspaper in their town, people generally base their opinions on the data they got from those sources. Now with the echo Chamber Channels that we have and so many of the social Media Channels out there, if you get your news from this source over here, youre also getting one set of facts. If you get it from this source over here, youre getting another set of facts. So what has happened is were now basing our opinions on separate sets of facts. Were no longer have common data that were basing our opinions on. So is it any wonder that the partisan divide grows deeper and wider. Rose this was a famous quote of our late senator Daniel Patrick moynihan, he said youre entitled to your own opinion but youre not entitled to your own facts. But we all come equipped with your own facts. Rose contrast to someone who says when being questioned on national television, said we have our own facts. We have alternative facts to the story that you are discussing. You know, in the oxford dictionary,. Rose 2015. Post truth word of the year was post truth. Rose let me talk about this administration where you have been in washington tor all those years. You said one thing one time that it was the stain on everything the administration would that it touched. Have you seen politics like this ever before. No, no, i havent. Rose how is it different . Well, its just totally different. I mean i this is i mean this is truth. I said on television so many times this year or last year, ive never seen anything like this. It became a drinking game among the young people at cbs news. Every time old bob said ive never seen anything, down the hatch. Thank god they had designated drivers. I mean but no, charlie, i havent. And i dont know anybody who has. I mean this was the most unusual election in the most unusual year that i think i ever saw. I mean there are so many things that you just say, did that really happen . My favorite moment in 2016 was when the speaker at that time john boehner called ted cruz lose fer in the flesh lucifer in the flesh and the devil worshiper society put out a press release and denied it. laughter they did. You can look it up. Rose all right. Thats how unusual it was. Rose you were surprised that he won, donald trump. Yeah, i was not surprised that he got the nomination. I kind of thought early on that he was going to get the nomination. Rose he was way ahead in the polls for the nomination. I was up at harvard doing a fellowship and i said i think donald trump is going to get the nomination on the republican side. And boy you think there wasnt a lot of coughing and eye rolling and things like that, people couldnt believe i had come to that conclusion. But he he figured out early on, he crafted a message. And he knew there were people out there especially across the rust belt that felt like they just were not getting a fair deal. And the government wasnt doing anything. And i think they they just decided, its not going well. We need a change and ill just take a flyer on him. Now they might tell you in different words the reason they voted for him. But i think thats a big part of it. He also ran a new kind of campaign. I mean i think one of the things that hurt Hillary Clinton was she ran a very oldfashioned kind of cam pin campaign. And by that i mean controlled the narrative, never put your candidate in a position where she might be asked a question she doesnt know the answer to. Control the narrative. And so she didnt appear on very Many Television programs. She was hardly ever on the sunday shows ruz trump was way more accessible. Trump figured out early on if you call up a certain number of television programs, you are going to get on some of them. And if you Say Something outlandish you will get invited to be on some more of them. And he just overwhelmed her with exposure. In this sense, we took a lot of criticism by saying you know, we gave him too much time and we didnt push back. We did push back. But he was getting on television so much that you would push back on this, and he is out there talking about something else. So i think a lot of this campaign and the reason she lost and he won came down to tactics. There is a there is a political consultant nameded Lynton Crosby from australia. And he worked in some of David Camerons campaigns in great britain. And he said one time, he had what he called the dead cat theory of politics. And the way that ran was say youre having a dinner party. And no matter what you are talking about, if somebody throws the dead cat on the table, youre going to Start Talking about the dead cat. Well, over and overdone ald trump would throw a dead cat on the table. I mean he would start the day, you know, saying something and if there was something that had happened yesterday, he would Say Something that had no relation to it whatsoever. And before you know it, for the rest of the day, the other candidates both republicans and democrats were responding to what he to what he said. And he was not a traditional politician in any sense of the word. But he did have some understanding of television. Rose some people asked the question and you bring this up in this book, how did the country nominate two of the least popular politicians. Well, i think. Rose for the parties. I think there is a reason for that. And part of it has to do with this revolution in technology that has changed the way we campaign and all of that. But i think our lech trorral system, the way we select and elect our candidates is not completely broken down but it is in worse shape than the roads and bridges in this country. And for a variety of reasons. Number one, the system has completely and totally been overwhelm