0 the bill just got harder for peruvian criminals. thank you for being part of my program this week. i'll see you next week. stay tuned for "reliable sources." "the new york times" under scrutiny for big stories. is the paper right, wrong or somewhere in between? 13 days into the government shutdown and two big stories dominating the media landscape. >> breaking news on capitol hill, meetings under way right now and new questions on whether the gop is about to cave to white house demands on a debt deal. >> the news of the day in which the house gop has essentially offered the six-week clean debt ceiling while the government stays shut down. >> cautious optimism has gone away. are we back to square one now? >> are media too focused on politics rather than consequences of the stalemate and when there are so much spin and talking points, how do we get the facts? we'll look at the challenges and importance of fact checking and explore whether a growing focus devoted that intersurprienterpr making a difference. we'll talk with a report's author about the administration's crackdown on whistle blowers and its impact on journalists and news and commercials you can use in just six seconds. >> how much news can you possibly fit in six seconds time? tune into cnn right now to find out. >> we'll climb the vine. the vine. and find out why a growing number of media outlets, businesses and politicians are using this social media app. i'm frank sesno and this is "reliable sources." we start this week with our crosshairs focused on "the new york times." on october 5th, this breaking news headline on the "times" website. u.s. says navy seal team captured shabab leader in somalia. only problem, the story was wrong. when the "times" updated the story it said "the s.e.a.l. team was forced to withdraw before it could confirm it killed the shabab leader. the "times" says early coverage accurately reflected initial government accounts. next, this past thursday after a meeting between president obama and house republican leaders, the "times" reported that obama had rejected a republican proposal for a short-term debt limit plan. the white house said no specific determination was made and many republicans told cnn the president didn't reject or approve anything. the "times" stuck to its story saying it was "factually accurate" and did not require a correction. said the "times" it was clear the white house was not going to accept the republican proposal as offered. finally, the "times" may have tripped on itself over the thursday story that a cia warning on suspected nsa leaker edward snowden slipped through the cracks when he worked for the agency in geneva and he was returned home because of those concerns. a cia spokesman said while we were unable to quote on the assertions in today's "the new york times" story on edward snowden, the primary allegation of the story is inaccurate on multiple levels. on saturday the "times" reported cia disputes early suspicions on snowden but the paper stood by its earlier report saying they quoted two senior official with direct knowledge of the episode. joining me to discussion all of this and to discuss whether the gray lady has gotten a black eye, ramesh ponnuru, tell noir cliff joins us here and joe concha from new york. i got to start with you, joe concha. i'm not going to bury the lead. congratulations. you had a baby when? >> friday night 9:26 p.m. 6 pounds. there she is. cameron. got beat up in delivery. 6 pounds, 14 ounces. hence the pink tie you see today. we're sticking with theme here. we couldn't be anymore proud. thank you so much. >> congratulations to you and all the best on the journey of your life i promise you that. let me bring you back to the journey we're on here which is looking at the gray lady and what seems to be problems over the past eight days. how do you explain it. >> i would love to hear margaret sullivan explain this, frank. she's "the new york times" public editor. the public editor is a publicly identifies errors and omissions and reports them to the public saying we got this wrong here. i haven't seen one article from margaret sullivan saying we may have made a mistake here or if he made a mistake, here's why. the whole reason why you hire a public editor is for a pr move in light of the jason blare fiasco. where is margaret sullivan? if you're going to have a policeman on your editorial staff, decisions weren't made at all this week. >> i want to make this clear and i'll make the point as i turn to eleanor clift. we invited margaret sullivan and others from "the new york times" and they were either unavailable or declined. eleanor, the thing most disturbing to many when you see this thing is attribution to officials. american officials. hanging stories, very important story, moved in real time and cnn for example did not report that the al shabab leader, somalia story, that he had been killed in its initial reporting. does that trouble you? >> anybody that's reported in washington understands how difficult it is to get people on the record. american officials is probably the broadest term that could be just about anybody. so i think -- i'm always instructed to try to get the attribution as narrowly as possible and to give some indication of the motivation behind whoever the sources are and so i think, you know, i'm inclined to give "the new york times" the benefit of the doubt. they are about the only news organization that still does really deep reporting. and on the so-called error with the reporting of the budget negotiations, i have been covering that. you know, i think maybe they shouldn't have said flatly the white house rejected it but they were never going to settle for a short-term thing that took them right to the holidays. you know, is that wrong or right? it's a case of nuance in that case. >> i want to ask you this because this is what the "times" said it clarified that story on the obama rejection. it was clear the white house was not going to accept the republican proposal as offered as we did further reporting we updated the the story and presented a more nuance account. this comes in the middle of very sensitive negotiations. people can take a headline and run with it. politicians and posture and maybe even change a position or does it not matter? is this just part of realtime journalism now? >> i think all media institutions make mistakes. the associated press made a much bigger blunder this past week. you've got to correct them. you've got to be up front with leaders. >> you think it looks like they're pulling a fast one meaning what? >> what they're saying is, well, okay, so the administration didn't really explicity reject it but it basically rejected it. they conveyed something stronger than the truth. >> joe concha? >> i looked at the usage manual as i often do, one rule they have in there is anonymity is the last resort. it seems more and more at "the new york times" you hear from u.s. officials and unanimous sources say. that leads to one problem. the other is twitter. we need two editors in every publication. one for standard newspaper which they all have but then we always see again and again a tweet going out that they want to pull back. unfortunately it's like toothpaste. you can't put it back in the tube. we saw it a couple weeks ago with chuck todd with navy yard shooting. he put out a tweet saying it was wrong. did chuck todd have to go with the same test so i think this is twitter striking again and a race to be first instead of to be accurate. >> this is one of the big problems. a race to be first whether you are tweeting or on the air or writing a blog or a story. you have so many demands as a journalist now. you're at the daily beast. you do this. do you have someone editing every tweet, every story, every word that you write? >> nobody edits the tweets as far as i know. >> nobody edits your tweets? >> no. i say to myself every day, eleanor think less and tweet more. i don't tweet enough. >> scary. >> you have to trust yourself and i don't do it. i tweet fairly irregularly but in today's world we are encouraged to tweet to get our stories out there and promote our colleagues and if we're analysts and pundits, we should get our thoughts out there. i have never done anything or said anything that's career ending yet. we're all about two steps away from that i think. >> the cliff is closer. >> you got to be your enown editor. >> on twitter you have to be your own editor. it's a medium that rewards speed even more than all of the other ones that we're on and there's no time for an additional layer of checking. if you can't trust yourself to edit yourself, don't get on twitter. >> there may be a whole new classification of job here. joe, i want to come back to you something you said a moment ago about officials and trouble you have with officials. what eleanor said a few minutes ago and when "the new york times" is up against here, erasing the clock. a huge story. fact of the matter is if you are going to report in this town, you will report unnamed officials. people say protect me on this. use the information. i don't want you to they will anymore what building i'm in. are you saying "the new york times" shouldn't do that. >> i'm just saying it's happening more and more it seems. that's part of the race to be first. one more thing i want to point out is there are more media wat watchdogs than ever. conservative news blogs there to catch "the new york times" it will be in the crosshairs because they are seen as liberal in some circles. any time you tweet or get something wrong, it used to be you issue a correction and maybe some readers write something to the editor and it gets in the editorial page. now you make a mistake and everybody sees it. it's reported and usually some sort of motive is attached which may have not been the case here. that's where we are in 2013. you make a case, people are going to know about it. >> we've done our bit to help promote that agenda here as well. we want to make sure that what went wrong and explanations around it. when we return, the partial government shutdown and the debt ceiling fight as media focus on politics of the stalemate. are they having too much fun with the republican food fight? 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[ male announcer ] have the right partner at your side. consider an aarp medicare supplement insurance plan, insured by unitedhealthcare insurance company. go long. you work. and you want to get an mba. but going back to school is hard... because you work. now, capella university offers a revolutionary new way to get your degree. it's called flexpath and it's the most direct path, leveraging what you've learned on the job and focusing on what you need to know so you can get a degree at your pace. and graduate at the speed of you. flexpath from capella university learn more at capella.edu >> it was another week of griping and dwrgridlock as democrats accused tea parties in the house of holding the country hostage and republicans firing back by accusing president obama of refusing to negotiate to reopen the government. as the week wore on, the countdown clock to a debt default also grew shorter. on thursday the beginnings of a deal appeared to take shape. >> we begin with progress on day 11 of the partial shutdown. president obama and congressional republicans are starting to work together. >> now to the latest on the shutdown showdown. there appears to be movement to get the government back to work. >> like that shutdown showdown has a ring to it. how has the media done covering high stakes back and forth? ramesh, first to you. how have we done? >> as eleanor said earlier it's a complicated and fast moving story. i give reporters some slack on it. i do think that the atmospherics the media used about the shutdown have made it seem like more of a crisis atmosphere than it actually is. i think that's disserved the public because it has made it harder to see the impending debt ceiling problem which really could serious. when everything serious, nothing is. >> eleanor, a bit of a circus here? overplaying the seriousness as ramesh is saying of the partial shutdown? >> it's political entertainment definitely. it's also very serious. i think there's been a quiet consensus among the media the shutdown will roll into the debt ceiling. you can't separate the two although i understand that some people on the right would like to separate the two because they are really getting a lot of heat for flirting with default. >> joe, i think this is something that i really want you to take on with some seriousness here because it's fine to say that this is all about politics and it's a partial shutdown but when you talk to people who are actually not working, there are people at the nsa not working and people at the agriculture department who are not working and people who are supposed to crank out data that said hog futures and they're not working. there are real jobs not getting done here. >> that's true. i think the reason why this isn't resonating with the american people on that aspect as much is because when you woke up with the government shutdown or partial government shutdown started, my garbage was picked up. there were police down the street that made arrests the way he always does and lights still work. from local perspective, people didn't feel the shutdown. >> we turned this into a political circus, maybe people don't realize what's actually happening. >> here's the thing though. the reason why the media goes the other route which is who is winning and losing is because what's the most popular show in america these days? reality tv. it's all about creating villains and good guys. if you are on one side, ted cruz is a bad guy. other side, harry reid and president obama is bad guy or jo boehner is a bad guy. that's easier to sell than trying to explain what this means for the nsa. >> i would suggest getting out of washington or northern virginia bubble and reading some of the headlines in newspapers. remember, they still exist around the country. you see headlines everywhere about the absolute devastation this is having in local communities and people suffering everywhere. >> devastation? >> yes, devastation. economic devastation. >> give us examples. >> around the national parks, small businesses that are suffering. >> how many national parks are there in the country? >> there are a number of national parks. you know, it's that old line. if you're not suffering, it's not a problem. other people are suffering. it's devastation. and the white house every day is putting out the latest briefings they're getting about the fallout from this and the one that they put out yesterday was about cdc and the programs that are being cut back. you are looking at salmonella outbreaks. they can't get epa to come test. they say they are shut down. it's only a matter of time before kids get sick. this is -- and the ripple effect of this is only going to get greater. >> shouldn't the media and stories be spending as much time focus on these things eleanor is talking about than what john boehner is saying to the tea party? >> you have to cover both dimensions of the story at the same time. i would say that we had a 21-day government shutdown in 1995 and 1996 and it didn't prevent 1996 from being one of the best years in american history. let's report the problems but let's not inflate them. let's not make it sound like armageddon is happening. when sequestration started, there were lots of stories about how devastating it would be. it would be a national calamity. most people barely noticed it. there's a danger of the boy who cried wolf problem where i can guarantee you there are republicans congressman who are saying to themselves, the press said sequestration was going to lead to ruin. it didn't. they said shutdown would destroy the country and it didn't and now they are saying a debt ceiling default would be the same thing. why should i believe them? that's a profoundly erroneously way of thinking. this kind of coverage fuels it. >> joe concha, as our media watcher, i want you to weigh in but i want you to let me know how you think the media has done on this other story which is the debt ceiling. >> if you want to talk about coverage as a whole it goes from government shutdown to debt ceiling. look at the president's press conference on wednesday. not one question about health care.gov and the design of that. it doesn't work. it wasn't ready to actually be rolled out. people signing up. how many questions -- how many people have signed up? nothing from the white house press corps. none of the national correspondents for abc, nbc, cbs, fox, were called on that. the president was going from a list given to him by jay carney to other people that had nothing to do with obama care or affordable care act. if you want to ask me how has coverage been, there's a failure during that white house press conference and the fact that no hard questions were asked about the original reason for this government shutdown which was either to fund obama care or at least delay it, nothing was brought up. we're losing sight on exactly what has caused this in the first place. >> joe concha, fair point. while we're at it and gave "the new york times" a hard time a little while ago, let's do a shout-out to them for today for a good and specific story on the problems and even the failures that the obama care is having in opening days and the very deep computer glitches that are imperilling the whole system. you can check that out. after the break, holding politicians feet to the fire. their words any way. are news organizations and others doing enough fact checking and does it have any impact at all? 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